WARNING: THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG AND KIND OF RANTY
Okay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
jokes aside i think every caster are bound to make mistakes when they're casting 4-5 hours at a time. they are improving from season 1 so its good for me so far
Wow, tons of whiney posts on teamliquid as of late. Mods should put this in blogs... Edit: And i hate the argument that casters and viewers cant criticize pros. Obviously we cant do better, but as pros, they should be able to do better so we can criticize them...
I can't wait to hear them make subtle jokes about you on the cast, and how they read a post on the forums that THEY'VE LOST THEIR PASSION!
That being said, the only complaint I really agree with is the one about Artosis not being willing to correct himself(or Tasteless, for that matter), he does seem tentative to admit "oh actually I was wrong, and it looks like he is instead doing _____." I've heard him say it at times but it isnt as often as it should be, I think! That's the one thing I like better about Wolf is he'll correct mistakes!
Anyways, Tastosis are really entertaining, and the best casting tandem out there, so of course they get a blind, passionate following, but that doesn't mean they don't have faults. But they're still better than the rest.
so whats wrong with drinking and partying in terms of affecting your ability to cast? to me it seems like your one of those people really underestimating people's ability to analyize stuff.
he might be wrong sometimes - still you tell us hes wrong all the time
there is a BIG difference of a simplistic and just stupid view of things :§
Well backed up points that being said thats how casting teams work, 1 anilitcal(sp) and 1 play by play, do you think djWheat has any clue about how to play at a even close to high level, no thats why idra, and incontrol co cast with him.
You've got to be kidding me. None of this is good constructive criticism. It's all just nitpicking.
EDIT: Especially that line about how Tasteless has no right to criticise players because he isn't as good as them. That's the most fucking retarded thing I've ever heard.
#1 It was Tasteless who kept questioning why Keen didn't bring his SCVs, Artosis just kept sort of half heartedly agreeing with him...something he often does when Tasteless is wrong to avoid making him look stupid.
#2 Tasteless is in no position to criticize due to his SC2 skills? If that were true no caster could EVER criticize a player, that argument is silly, better to say he does often criticize in the wrong place.
Yes I'm nitpicking but that's exactly what your post is doing.
I get the impression Tasteless doesn't really play SC2 anymore, which is a bit of a shame, he's still a funny guy though and I think most people agree on that. Artosis provides quality analysis most of the time and you would be hard pressed to find anyone better, every person is going to imprint their own bias on a cast in some way, it's human nature, and imo you are being overly critical in your post, particularly the method of using one example against someone who has kept many many people entertained for months.
1- No one's ruining esports. 2- People listen to casters they ENJOY, not casters that are the most analytic. 3- Why don't you do yourself a favour and post a commentary make a justin channel if you were that awesome and want to help esport and make some money...
I kinda skimmed over your post cause I'm busy but I just wanna mention that I don't like watching Tastosis all that much either. Your points pretty much sum up how I feel about them, there's just something about the way they cast that doesn't sit well with me. I would much rather listen to Day9, DJWheat, Husky etc.
So you don't like them and you nitpick. cool. You probably should have made this in blogs.
I'm not nitpicking; I'm highlighting specific examples of where they are wrong to highlight bigger overarching issues with the cast.
I agree. The posts that will follow will generally just agree or disagree based on personal preference. Not much to discuss about this.
Obviously some things are subjective, like the jokes Tastosis make, so I didn't discuss them. I discussed problems with their analysis, which is pretty black or white whether they're making correct observations or not.
So who do you reccomend as the gold standard to 'good' casting. I'm sure someone can find an equal dissertation on why they are inadequate, too.
Other casters having flaws is not an argument for not correcting flaws that Tastosis have.
so whats wrong with drinking and partying in terms of affecting your ability to cast? to me it seems like your one of those people really underestimating people's ability to analyize stuff.
he might be wrong sometimes - still you tell us hes wrong all the time
there is a BIG difference of a simplistic and just stupid view of things :§
Yes, but I explained why in my post why a simplistic approach to the strategy in question is incorrect.
First of all, it is absolutely none of our business what they do outside of their job. I.E you saying Tasteless is partying or drinking in Seoul.
It's called relaxing after work and living his own life.
I think Tastosis in general are the best casting duo because of their chemistry. No one in that sense is better than them.
Tasteless is DEFINITELY masters, (and a really good one at that) and he's a protoss player, plus he plays both zerg and terran.
I know this because I DO play with him and I have watched him play first hand as well.
His understanding of the game as a player is really high, and him not being an analytic caster is because of his ROLE as part of the duo as Tastosis to be the "life" of the pair.
I don't even want to discuss about Dan, because he is far-by one of the pioneer of being an analytic caster.
Predictions are occasionally wrong as a caster because the meta-game in SC2 is evolving really quickly and sometimes it is hard to predict something correctly since 2rax CAN be all in, it can be 2 rax expand, 2 rax into blue flame into banshee, I mean, if we are talking about terran play here, Terran is such a flexible race compared to analyzing Protoss or Zerg which is usually easier to read.
I always think that other "real sports" commentary is even worse in the points you describe though. All the major American and UK sports leagues have commentators who are biased, who don't follow the game's history enough and worst of all don't attempt to do any high level analysis of a team's gameplan, limiting themselves to play-by-play.
Tastosis may be flawed but they are still the best commentators in existence.
Even though I shouldn't think this way, sometimes Artosis's biases make the game more interesting to watch because the player he supports is usually the player the foriegner 'scene' wants to win anyway. So framing the game in terms of their ups and downs is matched to how people are feeling.
It was most blatant in the Korea vs World league where he was also the team coach and was pushing for his team the whole time while casting, but honestly it was fine because everyone watching the stream was feeling the same.
As much as you guys may or may not agree with this individual about Tastosis, ALMOST ALL of his points are valid ones. I myself have noticed that Tasteless seems to lack game sense at important times, and one other thing that really annoys me as of late is the fact that he constantly rants about insignificant things while critical actions are taking place in the game (which although is nothing new from Tasteless, has begun to slightly annoy me). I could go on to cite multiple examples as to where this has happened, but out of respect and my enjoyment for the SC2 community, I won't.
Please don't take my post or the OP's post in the wrong manner. Understand that we (or at least I do) appreciate Tastosis's work (especially Tasteless's). I've been listening to Nick cast since I was 13, and I am now 23.
Hopefully things improve for them...but even if they don't, they'll still have an avid watcher.
Artosis brings in valuable information for more experienced players while Tasteless drops some info that even though might be wrong, in the eyes of a begginer that's pretty much what, in fact, is going on.
Plus they both have a good chemistry and are funny as hell.
Just because you're high skilled player and needs deep intricated information of what's going on doesn't mean that all the other spectators also want/could understand that.
I agree with every point you put foward but it really doesnt matter, with people these days is that they just go with what everybody else say and go on about how fantastic tastosis are. This has given Artosis and Tasteless an inflated sense of self importance and they always mention how if somebody complains about the gsl ( I assume some of these complaints will include people pointing out the flaws in their casting ) they stick their head in the sand and block the poster.
This is very good post but I assume the vast majority of replies to this thread will be blind fanboys who will will read the title and say, as you pointed out, that you are ruining ESPORTS or some crap.
I can't comment on most of your points since I'm at the university when most GSL matches are streamed (such as now ._.) and my shitty laptop can't handle the stream (at least not in acceptable quality), but I want to comment on your post concerning the position of Tasteless to criticize players. I think he is very much in a position to state if something really did not work. This is what all sports commentators do without everyone being an olympic champion in the respective sport. However, what you wanted to express I guess, is the problem of criticizing players _before_ they made a _clear_ mistake. This is also mostly what you blame Artosis for I think. Commentators should not give comments to strategies/happenings in the game they do not comprehend completely with all intentions. Sure, if some mismicroed obviously etc., you can mention it. But I agree with you in the regard that all fundamental criticism regarding strategy/attempts to allin/cheese etc. whatever should be spared until the game is over and the retroperspective analysis with replays etc. is going on, because only then one can really see what possibly the intention behind a certain move was or how a specific build turned out.
I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
On August 11 2011 20:55 RPR_Tempest wrote: You've got to be kidding me. None of this is good constructive criticism. It's all just nitpicking.
EDIT: Especially that line about how Tasteless has no right to criticise players because he isn't as good as them. That's the most fucking retarded thing I've ever heard.
I agree with this post. i wish i didnt read all the OP.
wow, this looks more and more like an analysis of games instead of criticism to tastorsis, good work. I completely agreed with all of your points above, for me the most anoying thing a caster could do is being biased and unprofessional.
So you don't like them and you nitpick. cool. You probably should have made this in blogs.
I'm not nitpicking; I'm highlighting specific examples of where they are wrong to highlight bigger overarching issues with the cast.
You are nitpicking, just because you say you are not and call it something else doesn't mean you are not nitpicking. No caster can be perfect, just as no player can be perfect. These guys do this professionally and are sometimes casting for 4+ hours a day. If you want to be a little nitpicker and look at specific examples you can find plenty of examples of every caster making mistakes.
This post is not constructive, it is insulting and as such should be moved to blogs or closed.
On August 11 2011 20:49 Kraznaya wrote: Hey look, four posts without reading the OP. Great job living up to standards TL community.
Why insult the dissenters?
I have read your post in its entirety and disagree with you based on my belief that casters are not in the explicit business of providing unbiased and omniscient analysis, but entertainment. I don't think we are lacking in proof that they are exceedingly competent in pleasing a large number of viewers and contribute a large part to the reasoning behind many persons' decision to drop $25 or however much it is now into a GSL ticket.
This post feels biased. I feel like your analysis of Tasteosis was very one sided and focused on their mistakes and weaknesses while ignoring their strengths. Maybe an analysis of casters you like would be more balanced and on-target.
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
I hear you and see what you want to say, but I can't really talk about your analysis compared to Artosis as a) I didn't watch the specific game b) think your analysis(or at least what you wrote down) lacks some important stuff that could change the whole thing. So I won't comment on that.
However, about tastosis in general (and your other points) While I agree that Tastosis are not the best players in the world and do some mistakes, I still think they are still way, way ahead of all the other casters out there.
When other Casters(won't say names here) clearly don't even know the basics of the game, Artosis comes out with clear analysis of playstyles and strategies. He might do mistakes sooner or later because he is not perfect, but most of the time he is correct. He also says what the player, in his opinion, SHOULD HAVE done and why. This is really what gets you exciting as you then can say "Oh shit, Artosis said he f*** up. Let's see how it goes on." This is excitement. I don't even get slightly excited when I listen to other casrers.
About the bias... Well, that IS a problem. A good caster is not biased. However, a good caster also points out mistakes and bad play. What I think is that Artosis is sometimes TOO honest about that. "This player is so bad, he just lost the game."(arr) This kills excitement.. It doesn't happen too often, but when it happens, it's really annoying. Because oh so often he is right about it.
Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
On August 11 2011 20:55 RPR_Tempest wrote: You've got to be kidding me. None of this is good constructive criticism. It's all just nitpicking.
EDIT: Especially that line about how Tasteless has no right to criticise players because he isn't as good as them. That's the most fucking retarded thing I've ever heard.
I agree with this post. i wish i didnt read all the OP.
It's true it's a really foolish thing to say, it IS true Tastless often misplaces his criticism though, you'd be fine to say he needs to think a little more before he does it sometimes.
Hah well I don't know what to say really. I think they are great becauseI love their personality. Both of them have done so much for the SC-scene with the team house interviews from artosis, the gomTV Classic casting from tasteless (Hi lilsusie! ^_^), that I always take what they say with a laugh. And I don't what you expect really? Some people love them, some do not. Some mistakes happen, sometimes they are gods. That's just how it is. Sometimes they a bias towards some of the older players (i.e NaDa) but... it's NaDa god dammit. He's been owning up noobs for more than 10 years and have been (and still are) a rolemodel for both Tasteless and Artosis.
It's still funny for me to hear artosis and tasteless joke around on gomTV and do ladder jokes and what not because imo they have the real personality of gamers. They don't take everything so serious. Don't ever change tastosis <3
On August 11 2011 21:02 Pengu wrote: Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
effective strategy-casting on-the-fly is sometimes impossible in an RTS. its not a ball-and-stick sport. 10,000 things are happening at once. relative to other casters the Tastosis team do a better combo job of analysis/humour/entertainment than any other broadcasters.
the job is impossible. an effective analysis can only reliably be made after the game is over and replays can be examined slowly.
if your rebuttal is that its possible with some "hard work" then start your own live stream. get added to the list here on TL.Net. your improved analysis and added entertainment value will get quickly noticed.
and if it is possible to consistently get on-the-fly analysis correct every time you'll soon rocket to the top of list of casters to watch.
then you'll get paid to broadcast the highest profile games...
and because u r the only one who can provide this reliable instant on-the-fly analysis you can start your own "SC2 caster training institute". lost SC2 casters will pay 10s of thousands of dollars for your training.
my analysis of Tastosis being the best "combo of analysis and entertainment" comes from a casual perspective... i'm not spending 10,000 hours of my free time analysing the 5,000 casting options on here.
On August 11 2011 21:02 Pengu wrote: Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
I actually loved HSC3 casting, and I would not mind at all a completely analytic caster who was an incredibly high level player paired with a entirely hype play by play caster who does not attempt to do any analysis at all (and therefore does not misinform the public), like Totalbiscuit.
First of all: Take the sand out of your vagina. Its not worth writing a essay about.
Who cares if they make mistakes? I would absolutely love to see your casting. There was a pole somewhere on TL where tastosis where the favorite casters by far, I don't see why they can't disagree with what the player(s) are doing. in my opinion that's a fundamental role of casting.
But seriously, 99% of the community loves Tastosis. The other 0.9% of the community dislikes them but dosent complain because they are mature. You are the 0.1% of the commnuity who really are killing eSports (all jokes aside.)
Everyone makes mistakes, you just get upset over trivial things that don't really matter. Everyone makes mistakes and ppl plat+ can recognize those mistakes.
I don't think I have seen a perfect caster (like you want) there is always some sort of flaw whether it be blandness, mis-communication or misanalysis etc etc.
They cast every day for hours on end and you want them to be perfect every day. No sports casters or e-sports casters are perfect and often ramble on biases towards player just to fill air time. It happens and the world has accept it.
Day9 could talk about sand and tell me false information on it... and I'd eat that shit up. Why? Because he is entertaining and he knows how to make an hour go by quick..
I dont see an issue with casters having bias. We all have a certain amount of bias anyways and to try and pretend like we dont is an insult to those of us who understand human nature.
Basically it sounds to me like you are jealous of them and their success so you project that jealousy into a post where you pick apart every tiny little thing they have ever done wrong, then you throw in a whole bunch of total crap because your argument is highly flawed as it comes from your own bias and voila you have a whiny, college thesis sized, inaccurate post.
Heres an idea, if you dont like them maybe just dont watch?
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect.
Mutalisks do not slow down a terran push, banelings do. It's the constant threat of losing all your marines to a large ling/baneling army that makes it hard to push through the map, the mutalisks can easily clear up a drop on their own and then return to the middle to clear up the remaining forces in most cases.
Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth.
On August 11 2011 20:48 xza wrote: Hes ruining esports!
jokes aside i think every caster are bound to make mistakes when they're casting 4-5 hours at a time. they are improving from season 1 so its good for me so far
Not really. Hindsight is 100% better than foresight, Tasteless is a play-by-play caster. OP addresses that Tasteless unfairly criticises the players' mistakes, which I think is absolutely unfair of the OP.
Justification @ OP: As a caster, you are going on the fly, there is no preparation whatsoever. Whatever happens, you don't know what is going to happen during an engagement, and you don't exactly have the full picture even after the engagement finishes, unless a player just crushes his opponent with a far larger supply lead.
And casters cannot stop talking to analyse the game, they would not be doing their job otherwise. If you were a caster, there's a billion things going through your mind at once, you want to say something as well as comprehend what goes on during the game.
So Tasteless spends his focus entirely on commentating, and because of his inbuilt knowledge, he more often than not spews out correct or half correct information automatically. He doesn't have time to think.
Artosis covers that blind spot of Tasteless' very well. More often than not, Artosis makes correct predictions during the downtime of games, while players are macroing or transitioning.
And I don't really think being biased towards one player ruins eSPORTs. It creates balance/better player discussions, it introduces divides, it perpetuates small amounts of drama and memes.
On August 11 2011 21:02 Pengu wrote: Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
would not mind at all a completely analytic caster who was an incredibly high level player
This doesn't even exist. If they're splitting their time between casting and playing they won't be good at both.
No but seriously, if you watch the GSL you should have some general idea of whats going on regardless of what the casters are doing. The production tab is open for you most the time and the minimap shows you movements regardless of where casters are looking at. Tastosis do a great job considering the scene they're following which tends to innovate so much. Maybe their knowledge is slightly lacking but that's just how it is sometimes, no one's perfect and you if you simply don't like the style of casting you should just mute. Besides there are no casters in Korea that match Tastosis in terms of sheer charisma (maybe QXC) and I think that means more to the community than analytical expertise.
On August 11 2011 21:02 Pengu wrote: Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
It depends on the audience. I thought HSC3 was the pinnacle of casting.
In the past, being popular wasn't enough to save casters like Klazart from heavy criticism on TL. The tides have turned, however.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect.
Mutalisks do not slow down a terran push, banelings do. It's the constant threat of losing all your marines to a large ling/baneling army that makes it hard to push through the map, the mutalisks can easily clear up a drop on their own and then return to the middle to clear up the remaining forces in most cases.
Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth.
9-7 in Zerg's favour is hardly a big deal. Since they updated the map it's looked just fine in my eyes.
Mutas do help stop a Terran push, because Terran cannot split his marines without taking massive amounts of damage from above when mutas are present. It is much harder to push when there are mutas overhead compared to when there is just ling/baneling present.
As for Bel'Shir, I'm pretty sure nearly every professional player agrees that it is Zerg favored. The winrate is still relatively even on Korea due to the higher representation of good Terrans in Korea, and the fact that it is often used as a Zerg snipe map in team league (where the zerg sniper would be a less skilled player than the Terran carrying the streak).
On August 11 2011 20:48 xza wrote: Hes ruining esports!
jokes aside i think every caster are bound to make mistakes when they're casting 4-5 hours at a time. they are improving from season 1 so its good for me so far
Not really. Hindsight is 100% better than foresight, Tasteless is a play-by-play caster. OP addresses that Tasteless unfairly criticises the players' mistakes, which I think is absolutely unfair of the OP.
Justification @ OP: As a caster, you are going on the fly, there is no preparation whatsoever. Whatever happens, you don't know what is going to happen during an engagement, and you don't exactly have the full picture even after the engagement finishes, unless a player just crushes his opponent with a far larger supply lead.
And casters cannot stop talking to analyse the game, they would not be doing their job otherwise. If you were a caster, there's a billion things going through your mind at once, you want to say something as well as comprehend what goes on during the game.
So Tasteless spends his focus entirely on commentating, and because of his inbuilt knowledge, he more often than not spews out correct or half correct information automatically. He doesn't have time to think.
Artosis covers that blind spot of Tasteless' very well. More often than not, Artosis makes correct predictions during the downtime of games, while players are macroing or transitioning.
And I don't really think being biased towards one player ruins eSPORTs. It creates balance/better player discussions, it introduces divides, it perpetuates small amounts of drama and memes.
It's pretty easy to just do pure play by play casting and refrain from making bad calls though :/
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
You should know that a lot of the people who like Tastosis isn't doing it with blind devotion. So far they are the ones who have been around for ages. They are the ones whom people have gone to for a great time (Streams, youtube videos + alot more). They actually do something for the community.
On August 11 2011 21:02 Pengu wrote: Everyone keeps wanting someone that knows everything about the game... I watched home story cup 3 and even though they could tell you the exact build coming up they were (mostly) boring.
You need passion rather than knowledge to be a great caster. Look at the people that are considered as good casters by the community they all have super passion for the game above all else, that is what matters.
would not mind at all a completely analytic caster who was an incredibly high level player
This doesn't even exist. If they're splitting their time between casting and playing they won't be good at both.
Artosis has the potential to do it (his mechanics aren't good enough to be truly competitive, but his understanding of the game is there), if only he could shut out his biases and prevent them from hampering his analysis.
Some good points, some poor. The concept of being unable to criticize better players is silly though and you'd best remove it, because everyone is a critic in essence.
Misreading someones play and calling them poor/all-in'ish when they aren't is worse obviously, and I have noticed some of the bias you're calling in their casts.
I'm a big fan of Tastosis and I really enjoy their GSL casting (I don't think their NASL was quite up to par, they seemed a bit tired/uninterested and plugged GSL constantly, I mean more than seems reasonable) and saying they have faded over time is kinda true too. You do need to be playing this game at a truly competative level to be able to cast truly analytically - this is why people love IdrA casting even though his voice is monotonous, he makes REALLY good calls on the way the game is going. His knowledge shines through. He falls victim to anti-terran bias though, obviously.
I started out in SC2 as many people recently have by watching Husky. In the beginner scene he was fun to watch and created draw for starcraft (which is a good thing) but misanalysis and bad calls do enter his casts which get jumped upon by more elitist community members. I drifted away from watching his stuff and I really appreciate casts by Tastosis these days, but I see i've let a certain bias for the high level nature (and fame) of Tastosis compared to Husky blind me to some of the flaws they actually share.
In the end, this is more of a blog. Interesting post tho.
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
I feel bad that your valid points aren't being adressed because there definitely are some valid points in there but with the personal attacks you kind of asked for it. You know you are arguing against a bunch of mindless fanboys so it's best to do so as clean as possible.
wow. you seem like a complete prick try to talk for 4-5 hours straight sometimes. It only takes 1 minute of talking before I say something I am completely unprepared to defend against the scrutiny of serious nerds like you. I think its hilarious when people nit pick casters for doing their fucking job.
every top player sees the game differently. I think its hilarious when some forum troll tries to argue against real time analysis over a day after the results. sounds pretty unfair imo
Re: the arguments that saying Tasteless can't criticize players better than him is a bad argument. This is partially true, and probably poorly phrased by me. In essence, I am saying that the skill (or understanding) gap between Tasteless and the players in question is too large for him to do effective analysis in many situations. My statement was probably too universal and therefore was probably fallacious.
Re: the argument that Tastosis can't be perfect and shouldn't be criticized because they are an asset to the community. I have already addressed that in my OP. Lack of perfection does not mean that they cannot improve, especially when their errors have such a huge impact.
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
You should know that a lot of the people who like Tastosis isn't doing it with blind devotion. So far they are the ones who have been around for ages. They are the ones whom people have gone to for a great time (Streams, youtube videos + alot more). They actually do something for the community.
I don't think very many of them watched the 2006 onward WCG/Blizzcon/GOM Invitiational #1 casts.
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
I feel bad that your valid points aren't being adressed because there definitely are some valid points in there but with the personal attacks you kind of asked for it. You know you are arguing against a bunch of mindless fanboys so it's best to do so as clean as possible.
I agree with this entirely. A lot of the stuff in the OP comes off as nasty or bitter, when there really are valid criticisms to be made.
I want my three minutes back. And I'm a fast reader. Others will likely demand more.
Let me preface this with this: Tastosis does screw up sometimes. it's natural. And I really do wish they understood terran more, but that's never really been obvious until I watched QXC cast, and it's no fault of theirs if they don't -play- the race. Day9 plays random and isn't a great terran caster either.
To add something constructive: you should try treating this as a game again. You sound sorely like the far-too-obsessive wow nerds that criticize blizzard themselves for any hiccups in lore or balance decisions that pander in any way, shape, or form, to the 95% of their player base that isn't cutting edge pvp or raiding. You want something that makes no sense for the vast majority of players, and your niche is just not going to be filled in the outlet you demand (the GSL) I suggest watching the koreans, who scream and yell and do very little actual analysis.
Analysis is for day9 dailies and that's kind of it. I think you should consider doing analysis yourself if you consider the lack of it to be a problem. Real analysis on the fly is harder than hell when you have no more time to think than the player. Try muting a code A cast, turning on your microphone recorder, and try to VOCALLY analyze the real meat of what BOTH players are doing, while still giving a play-by-play and being entertaining. Tastosis is by no means perfect at it, but I have a sneaking suspicion you have no understanding or respect for how good they really are.
You really want pro analysis? Stop watching a tournament designed to be entertainment. Because your nitpicking (and that's really what it is) is just asinine and has some nasty personal inflections. You're spreading rumors that you have NO basis for stating about nick's personal life (has he done a drunk cast yet? no? Then stop talking.)
This post bleeds with way more emotional investment than I've ever seen artosis give to a specific player, is rude and unconstructive, and makes me really worry for the OP. He really needs a real, live friend to share starcraft with, because the game itself appears to be dominating his life in order to generate a post like that. And that's genuinely unhealthy (think this statement is offensive? it's got a lot more substance to its basis than his comment about tastless being a drunk)
I'm not even going to begin on why every single thing you've said here is wrong, rude, and offensive. I'm sure others will do that. But really, man. Stop looking for reasons to get angry with your game and start looking for things to love. There are hundreds of streams, tournaments, and alternatives to tastosis. If you don't like any of them.... well.... try casting yourself or stop complaining.
On August 11 2011 21:12 billyX333 wrote: wow. you seem like a complete prick try to talk for 4-5 hours straight sometimes. It only takes 1 minute of talking before I say something I am completely unprepared to defend against the scrutiny of serious nerds like you. I think its hilarious when people nit pick casters for doing their fucking job.
every top player sees the game differently. I think its hilarious when some forum troll tries to argue against real time analysis over a day after the results. sounds pretty unfair imo
Thanks for the compliment
Like I said, obviously casters can make mistakes, but Tastosis do a very poor job of correcting mistakes and owning up to them This is a problem because many people consider their analysis golden, and they are in effect perpetuating falsehoods when they refuse to realize they are wrong after the fact.
On August 11 2011 21:16 Hermasaurus wrote: I think you should edit your post, and really look for more places to use the word "Inception". Maybe even start with the title.
It's an awesome word that spawned a great movie, what can I say?
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
You should know that a lot of the people who like Tastosis isn't doing it with blind devotion. So far they are the ones who have been around for ages. They are the ones whom people have gone to for a great time (Streams, youtube videos + alot more). They actually do something for the community.
I don't think very many of them watched the 2006 onward WCG/Blizzcon/GOM Invitiational #1 casts.
Watching Tasteless and Super Daniel Man cast in English led me to TL and professional BW back when I was a mere FPS player!
I think you're bringing up minor issues and it's mostly about you disagreeing with the analysis. No matter who is right it's 1) easier to see in retrospect and 2) not very different from any random argument about strategy.
I think they're doing a good job so I don't see why you expect casters to fully agree with you or be what you consider perfect, it's not going to happen with any casters in any sport.
On August 11 2011 21:04 pStar wrote: First of all: Take the sand out of your vagina. Its not worth writing a essay about.
Who cares if they make mistakes? I would absolutely love to see your casting. There was a pole somewhere on TL where tastosis where the favorite casters by far, I don't see why they can't disagree with what the player(s) are doing. in my opinion that's a fundamental role of casting.
But seriously, 99% of the community loves Tastosis. The other 0.9% of the community dislikes them but dosent complain because they are mature. You are the 0.1% of the commnuity who really are killing eSports (all jokes aside.)
Typical stupid blind fanboy.
So your first point is totally rediculous, you are rediculing him for writing a well thought out post about a issue that everybody seems to be ignoring.
Also the argument " I would love to see your casting " is a stupid point and it does not mean anything at all, and for the most part I think he wrote this up for tastosis to read themselves and hopefully take some his points in mind.
You are saying that the OP is immature for critising Tastosis as if they are untouchable or something? I think that is something that alot of people think on TL and it is wrong. Also your saying he is killing ESPORTS. Just no. Also I think your the guy who should be taking the sand out of his vagina.. 8 )
To the issue with Artosis being biased: Every caster picks a side when they see the who the match involves. Either consciously or unconsciously. And this is going to color the way he casts either he likes it or not. If it isn't because he straight up likes either player more, it could be as simple as because he thinks the name of the player looks cooler. That's just how human psychology works. What most pro-casters try to do is hide this in the cast as much as possible. Some do it better than other (Wolf to take your example), some isn't as good at it (Artosis), but it will always be there. Like it or not.
To the issue with Tasteless being the funny guy, not implementing thought of his own to the game: Every caster-duo needs, as you've said, one that gives the strategic insight (Artosis, Day9, PainUser and other "pro-gamer-casters), the other brings the humor and usually has a more outgoing personality (seen from the viewers pov.). Examples are Tasteless, DJ_Wheat, TB etc. etc. It isn't necessary for Tasteless to come with his own strategic opinions. That's Artosis' job.
In my opinion this is how casterduos should be. Stratetic insight when it's needed, and someone to fill in the blanks with personality and random humor, with the united goal of making the cast likeable by the viewer, leaving him with the impressions that he learned something, but still wasn't bored.
I lost my train of thought mid-typing, so I'm gonna stop here. I like bringing up the subject though. Casting 'skills' should be focused on to make the lever higher and not overlooked, just as much as the SC2 community's goal is to make the players skill level grow in general. And if you feel I've just repeated what you've said putting an OK-stamp by it, instead of and DENIED-stamp. I'm sorry.
[EDIT] lol @ 4 pages of text while I was writing my comment ^o)
On August 11 2011 21:00 Mikilatov wrote: I'm not going to lie. I tried really hard to read through this but couldn't manage to keep going when I got to the point about Tasteless partying. This nitpicks so badly, and I feel like you're just way too critical overall. I so badly wish to counterpoint everything you've said, but it's entirely fruitless, and I dont even know where to begin.
I may not have pulled punches about my criticism, but I felt like a harsh stance was fair to further highlight the contrast to the blind devotion that Tastosis get from a large section of the viewing public.
You should know that a lot of the people who like Tastosis isn't doing it with blind devotion. So far they are the ones who have been around for ages. They are the ones whom people have gone to for a great time (Streams, youtube videos + alot more). They actually do something for the community.
I don't think very many of them watched the 2006 onward WCG/Blizzcon/GOM Invitiational #1 casts.
Watching Tasteless and Super Daniel Man cast in English led me to TL and professional BW back when I was a mere FPS player!
The GOM Classic 1 and 2 were >>>>> 3 and Avalon.
For those who don't know, in BW Tasteless was the analyst/funny guy/play-by-play/time killer everything all wrapped up in one. He was unquestionably the best caster.
Like I said, obviously casters can make mistakes, but Tastosis do a very poor job of correcting mistakes and owning up to them This is a problem because many people consider their analysis golden, and they are in effect perpetuating falsehoods when they refuse to realize they are wrong after the fact.
Seriously? How silly is that. "correcting and owning up to them?"
You are really out of touch with human nature, my friend. Watch Day9 explain the "caster mishap."
If they screw up, stumbling backwards over a derped up analysis will just piss EVERYONE off. If a screw up occurs, the FASTEST way to get it out of the human brain is to continue, uninterrupted.
You're also asking people who talk live, UNSCRIPTED, for 4-5 hours straight, to be perfect. You aren't being reasonable with your expectations of human beings.
I really don't like Tastosis as casters, but more for personal reasons.
It just bothers me how off-topic tasteless can be. artosis as well, tasteless more so. some of their jokes i really don't like. i think they overdo the bromance. i have no problem with homosexuality but honestly they do it so much. focus on the cast/game..
I remember one game in particular, for the first 6 minutes in game they did not mention anything that had happened in game. really guys? talk about the map. talk about different tactics they can use to exploit the map. talk about different strategies, scouting..... i dont even know what they were talking about..
on the topic of analysis.. yes, i feel like tasteless' analysis is subpar. i also feel that artosis' bias is very distracting.
i dunno. i feel like tastosis.. have just a slightly off interpretation of some things that the players do. they tend to criticize/praise people for weird reasons.
Like I said, obviously casters can make mistakes, but Tastosis do a very poor job of correcting mistakes and owning up to them This is a problem because many people consider their analysis golden, and they are in effect perpetuating falsehoods when they refuse to realize they are wrong after the fact.
Seriously? How silly is that. "correcting and owning up to them?"
You are really out of touch with human nature, my friend. Watch Day9 explain the "caster mishap."
If they screw up, stumbling backwards over a derped up analysis will just piss EVERYONE off. If a screw up occurs, the FASTEST way to get it out of the human brain is to continue, uninterrupted.
You're also asking people who talk live, UNSCRIPTED, for 4-5 hours straight, to be perfect. You aren't being reasonable with your expectations of human beings.
Did you even read about my example regarding the Keen all in which was not actually an all in? Not only did they mistakenly label the build, but they continued to mislabel the build, and refused to admit that they mislabeled the build, analyzing the game in a completely distorted way from the point they mislabeled the build to continue perpetuating the myth of Keen doing an all in.
I agree with a few posters. You had a couple of unnecessary jabs together with some constructive criticism. I would concur on Tasteosis being out of touch, biased etc. Obviously some things don't make logical sense (partying, can't pass comment on players better than him etc), but a lot of it was well said.
What does disappoint me was the sheer amount of shit posts there are. Phrases like "take the sand out of your vagina" are just vulgar and don't help anyone. Then you get the first posters who clearly didn't even read the article. Then you get the oh-so-hilarious posts which consist of "XXX IS KILLING ESPORTS" or "TASTELESS HAS LOST HIS PASSION" with one other line related slightly to the OP for flavour.
What annoys me most is the people who miss the whole point of the article. Yes, it was nitpicky, yes, it had its irrational moments but people either a) focus on the irrational parts and ignore the rest or b) respond to the whole article with a catch-all phrase like: "Tasteosis is good, they have good chemistry."
No one pretends that Tasteless knows anything about SC2, but doing the player introductions, fill time etc he works well with Artosis. tbh Artosis has enough game knowledge for the both of them. I still think they are best duo atm.
I'd like to the see the other Plott brother get a more permanent complimentary casting partner as well.
Did you even read about my example regarding the Keen all in which was not actually an all in? Not only did they mistakenly label the build, but they continued to mislabel the build, and refused to admit that they mislabeled the build, analyzing the game in a completely distorted way from the point they mislabeled the build to continue perpetuating the myth of Keen doing an all in.
Did you understand that perhaps a caster makes a mistake every once in a while, and that I agree that sometimes their terran understanding is a bit lacking?
Did you also understand that your expectations for real analysis in real-time is completely unreasonable? Do what I mentioned in my longer post. Mute the GSL, turn on your microphone, and try talking out thorough analysis. For both sides. For all races. And give play-by-plays.
You demonstrated that you are a terran player, thoroughly (as am I)
Try casting zvz, zvp, pvp with the depth that you analyzed keen's play. Aloud in real time. Both sides. No pauses. With play by plays. And then listen to it back.
You, my friend, are not being constructive with your criticism (where there is genuine room for constructive criticism) you are instead just screaming and kicking your feet in the most classic style of nerd temper-tantrum. I've seen your kind before, and I'll yet see it again.
Analysis is for day9 dailies and that's kind of it. I think you should consider doing analysis yourself if you consider the lack of it to be a problem. Real analysis on the fly is harder than hell when you have no more time to think than the player. Try muting a code A cast, turning on your microphone recorder, and try to VOCALLY analyze the real meat of what BOTH players are doing, while still giving a play-by-play and being entertaining. Tastosis is by no means perfect at it, but I have a sneaking suspicion you have no understanding or respect for how good they really are.
^ this i think that the real issue is that the massive difference that hindsight makes in terms of predicting the outcome of a situation, which makes them seem like they miss an obvious play. when you look back and see the logical progression from point a to b it is natural to subconsciously see that as a logical conclusion that you could have come to quite easily, but then when put on the spot without that clear knowledge of the outcome it is very difficult and often eye opening to see the difficulty of it. its a concept that many people are often too stubborn and arrogant to accept, as well as one that many people simply dont realise.
i am not at all saying that they do not make mistakes, i am simply saying that the mistakes they make are not as bad as you make them out to be. i truly enjoy their casting very much, probably mostly for the humour, but their analysis is still very solid imo (with above factors accounted for)
Have to say Tastosis are probably my favourite casters, but there are a few points there that hit home, however harshly they might be written. I've always looked at it as Artosis proving the strategic analysis, which is usually spot on, and Tasteless as providing a more charismatic vibe, so I've never looked to him for strategy, but would probably prefer if he applied that charisma to fleshing out the player's styles and personalities more than unit jokes They can't be expected to be perfect but the other issue I would say you got was the bias that can sometimes come across, which has improved somewhat. I remember watching Ro32 matches in earlier GSLs and they just say 'can't see a problem for X player, this'll be quick' which just made me switch off, but even now sometimes it can be hard to care about less well-known players.
On August 11 2011 21:21 mjf wrote: I remember one game in particular, for the first 6 minutes in game they did not mention anything that had happened in game. really guys? talk about the map. talk about different tactics they can use to exploit the map. talk about different strategies, scouting..... i dont even know what they were talking about..
I should just ignore this post but seriously, I have to defend tastosis on this. No body who actually plays starcraft wants to hear the same fucking intro on the map. Its a joke and its a waste of time for everyone except first time viewers.
and seriously, discuss scouting? how many times can you discuss scouting patterns when you talk for 5 hours daily on starcraft? does this seriously interest you? Do you also want some thorough analysis of the 9 overlord or the supply depot wall in?
I agree with a few posters. You had a couple of unnecessary jabs together with some constructive criticism. I would concur on Tasteosis being out of touch, biased etc. Obviously some things don't make logical sense (partying, can't pass comment on players better than him etc), but a lot of it was well said.
What does disappoint me was the sheer amount of shit posts there are. Phrases like "take the sand out of your vagina" are just vulgar and don't help anyone. Then you get the first posters who clearly didn't even read the article. Then you get the oh-so-hilarious posts which consist of "XXX IS KILLING ESPORTS" or "TASTELESS HAS LOST HIS PASSION" with one other line related slightly to the OP for flavour.
What annoys me most is the people who miss the whole point of the article. Yes, it was nitpicky, yes, it had its irrational moments but people either a) focus on the irrational parts and ignore the rest or b) respond to the whole article with a catch-all phrase like: "Tasteosis is good, they have good chemistry."
No actually id say 90 % of his post was senseless whining with maybe 10 % of good criticism. And his personal jabs were completely unnecessary and this writer deserves 100 % of the criticism hes receiving. Talking about Tasteless' personal life? Crap like that is just wrong.
On August 11 2011 20:57 kellymilkies wrote: First of all, it is absolutely none of our business what they do outside of their job. I.E you saying Tasteless is partying or drinking in Seoul.
It's called relaxing after work and living his own life.
I think Tastosis in general are the best casting duo because of their chemistry. No one in that sense is better than them.
Tasteless is DEFINITELY masters, (and a really good one at that) and he's a protoss player, plus he plays both zerg and terran.
I know this because I DO play with him and I have watched him play first hand as well.
His understanding of the game as a player is really high, and him not being an analytic caster is because of his ROLE as part of the duo as Tastosis to be the "life" of the pair.
I don't even want to discuss about Dan, because he is far-by one of the pioneer of being an analytic caster.
Predictions are occasionally wrong as a caster because the meta-game in SC2 is evolving really quickly and sometimes it is hard to predict something correctly since 2rax CAN be all in, it can be 2 rax expand, 2 rax into blue flame into banshee, I mean, if we are talking about terran play here, Terran is such a flexible race compared to analyzing Protoss or Zerg which is usually easier to read.
But hey, what do I know :p \0/~
Owned hardcore (explaining the notion of predicting what someone will do with a very branching terran opening) by the woman that everyone thought knew nothing because of her accent.
Fifty bucks says OP was one of the person who sent death threats to kelly when she was casting.
(aside) Kelly FTW. One of the few girl SCII casters/players that I -really- respect, because she doesn't throw around the fact that she's a woman constantly as an attempt to get fans. Hell, I had to look up and see who wrote the post when I saw that she said she played -with- tastosis. It read like any other solid personality in the community.
Did you even read about my example regarding the Keen all in which was not actually an all in? Not only did they mistakenly label the build, but they continued to mislabel the build, and refused to admit that they mislabeled the build, analyzing the game in a completely distorted way from the point they mislabeled the build to continue perpetuating the myth of Keen doing an all in.
Did you understand that perhaps a caster makes a mistake every once in a while, and that I agree that sometimes their terran understanding is a bit lacking?
Did you also understand that your expectations for real analysis in real-time is completely unreasonable? Do what I mentioned in my longer post. Mute the GSL, turn on your microphone, and try talking out thorough analysis. For both sides. For all races. And give play-by-plays.
You demonstrated that you are a terran player, thoroughly (as am I)
Try casting zvz, zvp, pvp with the depth that you analyzed keen's play. Aloud in real time. Both sides. No pauses. With play by plays. And then listen to it back.
You, my friend, are not being constructive with your criticism (where there is genuine room for constructive criticism) you are instead just screaming and kicking your feet in the most classic style of nerd temper-tantrum. I've seen your kind before, and I'll yet see it again.
I'm a university student and have a part time job. Artosis's full time job is to cast SC2 games, analyze them, and understand the scene. If anyone could do Artosis's job, he wouldn't have the massive following that he does. If anyone could do Artosis's job, TL wouldn't burst aflame everytime Doa or Moletrap or Kelly gets selected to cast an important game. The whole point of this OP is to target the most prominent caster duo, and offer a look at where they might improve. When I see Tastosis performing under my (admittedly high) expectations, I feel as if they are not delivering the content and analysis that the foremost English SC casting team can offer.
Honestly, this in my opinion is the worst response to criticism. The fact that something is hard, or that perfection isn't attainable by humanity, isn't a legitimate response to suggesting that something could be made better.
Tastosis isn't a great set of casters because they have perfect analysis every time, they're a great set of casters because they're entertaining and engaging.
Did you even read about my example regarding the Keen all in which was not actually an all in? Not only did they mistakenly label the build, but they continued to mislabel the build, and refused to admit that they mislabeled the build, analyzing the game in a completely distorted way from the point they mislabeled the build to continue perpetuating the myth of Keen doing an all in.
Did you understand that perhaps a caster makes a mistake every once in a while, and that I agree that sometimes their terran understanding is a bit lacking?
Did you also understand that your expectations for real analysis in real-time is completely unreasonable? Do what I mentioned in my longer post. Mute the GSL, turn on your microphone, and try talking out thorough analysis. For both sides. For all races. And give play-by-plays.
You demonstrated that you are a terran player, thoroughly (as am I)
Try casting zvz, zvp, pvp with the depth that you analyzed keen's play. Aloud in real time. Both sides. No pauses. With play by plays. And then listen to it back.
You, my friend, are not being constructive with your criticism (where there is genuine room for constructive criticism) you are instead just screaming and kicking your feet in the most classic style of nerd temper-tantrum. I've seen your kind before, and I'll yet see it again.
I suggest you read the fucken post written by OP before questioning him/her. He said they never learn on their mistakes not because they make a mistake once in a while,,, please people READ THE WHOLE POST BEFORE U POST STUPID SHIT AND BAG OP.
Analysis is for day9 dailies and that's kind of it. I think you should consider doing analysis yourself if you consider the lack of it to be a problem. Real analysis on the fly is harder than hell when you have no more time to think than the player. Try muting a code A cast, turning on your microphone recorder, and try to VOCALLY analyze the real meat of what BOTH players are doing, while still giving a play-by-play and being entertaining. Tastosis is by no means perfect at it, but I have a sneaking suspicion you have no understanding or respect for how good they really are.
^ this i think that the real issue is that the massive difference that hindsight makes in terms of predicting the outcome of a situation, which makes them seem like they miss an obvious play. when you look back and see the logical progression from point a to b it is natural to subconsciously see that as a logical conclusion that you could have come to quite easily, but then when put on the spot without that clear knowledge of the outcome it is very difficult and often eye opening to see the difficulty of it. its a concept that many people are often too stubborn and arrogant to accept, as well as one that many people simply dont realise.
i am not at all saying that they do not make mistakes, i am simply saying that the mistakes they make are not as bad as you make them out to be. i truly enjoy their casting very much, probably mostly for the humour, but their analysis is still very solid imo (with above factors accounted for)
Obviously analysis in hindsight is much easier to do. I don't expect from Artosis (the analysis portions of) this essay when I listen to him cast, not even five years from now. In fact, if you read my post more carefully, you'll see that I didn't actually take issue with him misreading Keen's build as an all in INITIALLY. It's the continued unwillingness to admit error, colored by bias, as well as mistakes reading basic tactics (Tasteless and Terran drops) that irk me.
But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
On August 11 2011 20:55 RPR_Tempest wrote: You've got to be kidding me. None of this is good constructive criticism. It's all just nitpicking.
EDIT: Especially that line about how Tasteless has no right to criticise players because he isn't as good as them. That's the most fucking retarded thing I've ever heard.
I agree with this post. i wish i didnt read all the OP.
It's true it's a really foolish thing to say, it IS true Tastless often misplaces his criticism though, you'd be fine to say he needs to think a little more before he does it sometimes.
On August 11 2011 20:48 xza wrote: Hes ruining esports!
jokes aside i think every caster are bound to make mistakes when they're casting 4-5 hours at a time. they are improving from season 1 so its good for me so far
Not really. Hindsight is 100% better than foresight, Tasteless is a play-by-play caster. OP addresses that Tasteless unfairly criticises the players' mistakes, which I think is absolutely unfair of the OP.
Justification @ OP: As a caster, you are going on the fly, there is no preparation whatsoever. Whatever happens, you don't know what is going to happen during an engagement, and you don't exactly have the full picture even after the engagement finishes, unless a player just crushes his opponent with a far larger supply lead.
And casters cannot stop talking to analyse the game, they would not be doing their job otherwise. If you were a caster, there's a billion things going through your mind at once, you want to say something as well as comprehend what goes on during the game.
So Tasteless spends his focus entirely on commentating, and because of his inbuilt knowledge, he more often than not spews out correct or half correct information automatically. He doesn't have time to think.
Artosis covers that blind spot of Tasteless' very well. More often than not, Artosis makes correct predictions during the downtime of games, while players are macroing or transitioning.
And I don't really think being biased towards one player ruins eSPORTs. It creates balance/better player discussions, it introduces divides, it perpetuates small amounts of drama and memes.
If they had time to think, people would be unhappy because of all the "awkward pauses".
There are almost no natural pauses in the game where a caster can stop to gather his or her thoughts. Dual casts help with this to an extent, but now your attention is further split between listening to what your co-caster is saying so you can respond, looking all around the map, looking at the current engagement, commentating, camera control ... the list goes on.
Because of this you just run with whatever happens to come out of your mouth. Until you cast yourself, criticism like this doesn't help anyone because you don't understand how casting works. People who nitpick about the correct usage of collosus and collosi are the worst, so I'll give you that much at least.
Frankly I don't hear Artosis's bias like you do, but then again I'm watching for entertainment.
On August 11 2011 20:55 RPR_Tempest wrote: You've got to be kidding me. None of this is good constructive criticism. It's all just nitpicking.
EDIT: Especially that line about how Tasteless has no right to criticise players because he isn't as good as them. That's the most fucking retarded thing I've ever heard.
I agree with this post. i wish i didnt read all the OP.
It's true it's a really foolish thing to say, it IS true Tastless often misplaces his criticism though, you'd be fine to say he needs to think a little more before he does it sometimes.
On August 11 2011 20:48 xza wrote: Hes ruining esports!
jokes aside i think every caster are bound to make mistakes when they're casting 4-5 hours at a time. they are improving from season 1 so its good for me so far
Not really. Hindsight is 100% better than foresight, Tasteless is a play-by-play caster. OP addresses that Tasteless unfairly criticises the players' mistakes, which I think is absolutely unfair of the OP.
Justification @ OP: As a caster, you are going on the fly, there is no preparation whatsoever. Whatever happens, you don't know what is going to happen during an engagement, and you don't exactly have the full picture even after the engagement finishes, unless a player just crushes his opponent with a far larger supply lead.
And casters cannot stop talking to analyse the game, they would not be doing their job otherwise. If you were a caster, there's a billion things going through your mind at once, you want to say something as well as comprehend what goes on during the game.
So Tasteless spends his focus entirely on commentating, and because of his inbuilt knowledge, he more often than not spews out correct or half correct information automatically. He doesn't have time to think.
Artosis covers that blind spot of Tasteless' very well. More often than not, Artosis makes correct predictions during the downtime of games, while players are macroing or transitioning.
And I don't really think being biased towards one player ruins eSPORTs. It creates balance/better player discussions, it introduces divides, it perpetuates small amounts of drama and memes.
If they had time to think, people would be unhappy because of all the "awkward pauses".
There are almost no natural pauses in the game where a caster can stop to gather his or her thoughts. Dual casts help with this to an extent, but now your attention is further split between listening to what your co-caster is saying so you can respond, looking all around the map, looking at the current engagement, commentating, camera control ... the list goes on.
Because of this you just run with whatever happens to come out of your mouth. Until you cast yourself, criticism like this doesn't help anyone because you don't understand how casting works. People who nitpick about the correct usage of collosus and collosi are the worst, so I'll give you that much at least.
Frankly I don't hear Artosis's bias like you do, but then again I'm watching for entertainment.
People need to stop constructing the strawman that I have a problem with Artosis's on the fly diagnoses of situations.
I really agree with the point about artosis being really biased towards some players and trying to commentate as if the opponents playing those players are inferior
On August 11 2011 21:35 Kraznaya wrote: I'm a university student and have a part time job. Artosis's full time job is to cast SC2 games, analyze them, and understand the scene.
That's nice. I'm in medical school and work full time, and I still think that you have no grounds to attack tastosis like you did.
If anyone could do Artosis's job, he wouldn't have the massive following that he does. If anyone could do Artosis's job, TL wouldn't burst aflame everytime Doa or Moletrap or Kelly gets selected to cast an important game. The whole point of this OP is to target the most prominent caster duo, and offer a look at where they might improve. When I see Tastosis performing under my (admittedly high) expectations, I feel as if they are not delivering the content and analysis that the foremost English SC casting team can offer.
"admittedly high" is a good starting point to realizing that your expectations are heinously unrealistic. Because seriously man, you are REALLY coming across as a basement dweller that doesn't have a friend to share his hobby with. If that's the case (and it's fine, by the way. I don't look down on people who have that problem, and rebutting it will serve no purpose) then I'd suggest looking around your uni and finding a group (or hell, starting one) that's into starcraft. You sound isolated to the degree that you can't EXPRESS your love for the game in any way except higher and higher demands of people you've never met.
I'd also suggest dicking around more in games and taking it less seriously. What league are you? I was mid-masters when I played standard, but now I'm platinum because I do things like build 66 ravens in a TvZ every game now. Play some 2v2's. Do some funday monday challenges. Your overtones about a GAME are far too serious. Taking anything that seriously is unhealthy. Same goes for my girlfriend's little sister, who makes olympic trial cuts in swimming. She is a jaded, one-dimensional person because of her unhealthy obsession with her passions.
Honestly, this in my opinion is the worst response to criticism. The fact that something is hard, or that perfection isn't attainable by humanity, isn't a legitimate response to suggesting that something could be made better.
The truth here, brotato, is that you aren't criticizing tastosis. You are ATTACKING and INSULTING them. There is something constructive to be gleaned from your OP, sure, but it's mired in the most antisocial nerd language that I've read in a long time. Constructive criticism is mixing good with bad. Things they're doing wrong, how they can do it better, why you feel it needs improvement. Not just nitpicking at caster mishaps, abjectly insulting one of them as a person, and doing nothing but saying all the crap you dislike about them and their casting style.
If you really dislike them that much, stop watching them. That's as strong a vote against them as anything else.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
You're calling tasteless uninformed, that he calls things wrong and that he lacks passion.
You're calling artosis biased but that he has improved since switching to protoss.
If you have such a deep understanding of the game, why do you need them to tell you what's going on? I'm only in Diamond and I rarely mis-predict build orders or have trouble figuring out who is ahead, or going to win long before the casters say anything. Sounds like you have some personal issues with them and want to sound impartial.
You make some points that are good, and some that are bad.
All in all though all I have to say is you try to pick up a microphone and do better. Casting is notoriously easy to do in your head (when you don't actually have to talk to anyone) and notoriously hard to do when you have to actually speaking the words. Try to be perfectly accurate about a game while constantly talking and trying to maintain a logical flow of thought. It's pretty hard.
Seriously just listen to a recording of yourself casting or even just talking to someone, and you will feel self-conscious. Things sound a lot better in our heads than they come out.
Sure I agree, Tastosis get a lot of things wrong. At the bottom line they are fairly entertaining, energetic, and if you're a smart enough player (which you seem to be) you can fill in the gaps yourself. It certainly beats watching Brood War vods on Jon747 or Nevake while three people scream a language that you can't understand. (Not that I didn't love certain things about watching starcraft with Korean commentators, they have a charm of their own, but it can be nice to understand the commentary too).
Obviously analysis in hindsight is much easier to do. I don't expect from Artosis (the analysis portions of) this essay when I listen to him cast, not even five years from now. In fact, if you read my post more carefully, you'll see that I didn't actually take issue with him misreading Keen's build as an all in INITIALLY. It's the continued unwillingness to admit error, colored by bias, as well as mistakes reading basic tactics (Tasteless and Terran drops) that irk me.
Let's think of it this way. If your analysis is so fantastic, why do you even listen to them? I certainly don't listen to anyone's strategic analysis in TvX because I want to draw my own conclusions as the game progresses and see how right (or wrong) they are.
Tastosis for me is just entertainment. So I don't really care to criticize them. That's not to say there is no room for it, but I just am secure enough in my understanding of the game that I don't care about their analysis. And it's not like they're doing any harm by being wrong. Players who lose in everything from masters to bronze are not going to lose more because tastosis made the wrong call in analysis. They're going to keep losing because their macro/micro/refinement sucks.
"admittedly high" is a good starting point to realizing that your expectations are heinously unrealistic. Because seriously man, you are REALLY coming across as a basement dweller that doesn't have a friend to share his hobby with. If that's the case (and it's fine, by the way. I don't look down on people who have that problem, and rebutting it will serve no purpose) then I'd suggest looking around your uni and finding a group (or hell, starting one) that's into starcraft. You sound isolated to the degree that you can't EXPRESS your love for the game in any way except higher and higher demands of people you've never met.
I'd also suggest dicking around more in games and taking it less seriously. What league are you? I was mid-masters when I played standard, but now I'm platinum because I do things like build 66 ravens in a TvZ every game now. Play some 2v2's. Do some funday monday challenges. Your overtones about a GAME are far too serious. Taking anything that seriously is unhealthy. Same goes for my girlfriend's little sister, who makes olympic trial cuts in swimming. She is a jaded, one-dimensional person because of her unhealthy obsession with her passions.
This is pretty hilarious because
1) I belong to the USC Esports CSL Team and Club, and hang out weekly with them, joking about shit like how retarded casters are sometimes. 2) I was a masters Terran Seasons 1 and 2, and I did exactly as you suggested this season by dropping all the way to silver and winning games doing stupid shit like mass sentries to troll noobs. 3) You're here ranting about my criticisms of a public figure, something that everyone takes part in from time to time, while you obtain to try to do some retarded amateur psychoanalysis on me. I mean, who does that? Sounds like you're the weirdo with too much time on his hands trying to psychoanalyze random people on the Internet you disagree with.
Honestly, this in my opinion is the worst response to criticism. The fact that something is hard, or that perfection isn't attainable by humanity, isn't a legitimate response to suggesting that something could be made better.
The truth here, brotato, is that you aren't criticizing tastosis. You are ATTACKING and INSULTING them. There is something constructive to be gleaned from your OP, sure, but it's mired in the most antisocial nerd language that I've read in a long time. Constructive criticism is mixing good with bad. Things they're doing wrong, how they can do it better, why you feel it needs improvement. Not just nitpicking at caster mishaps, abjectly insulting one of them as a person, and doing nothing but saying all the crap you dislike about them and their casting style.
If you really dislike them that much, stop watching them. That's as strong a vote against them as anything else.
Oh boo hoo, my post had hostile language! Who could've expected such when it was a critical post? Tastosis have thousands of people to shower them with praise and tell them what they're doing right. They need people to be honest with them and tell them what they're doing wrong.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
You're calling tasteless uninformed, that he calls things wrong and that he lacks passion.
You're calling artosis biased but that he has improved since switching to protoss.
This was my response.
And I wrote this post with the intention to highlight ways that they could improve, and point out that they do mistakes, in order to try to improve their casting and dispel myths about it at the same time.
So today, Wolf has casted nearly 9 hours now, and he has an increased work load, while Tasteless casts every other Code S game, tell me Tasteless hasn't lost his passion.
Obviously analysis in hindsight is much easier to do. I don't expect from Artosis (the analysis portions of) this essay when I listen to him cast, not even five years from now. In fact, if you read my post more carefully, you'll see that I didn't actually take issue with him misreading Keen's build as an all in INITIALLY. It's the continued unwillingness to admit error, colored by bias, as well as mistakes reading basic tactics (Tasteless and Terran drops) that irk me.
Let's think of it this way. If your analysis is so fantastic, why do you even listen to them? I certainly don't listen to anyone's strategic analysis in TvX because I want to draw my own conclusions as the game progresses and see how right (or wrong) they are.
Tastosis for me is just entertainment. So I don't really care to criticize them. That's not to say there is no room for it, but I just am secure enough in my understanding of the game that I don't care about their analysis. And it's not like they're doing any harm by being wrong. Players who lose in everything from masters to bronze are not going to lose more because tastosis made the wrong call in analysis. They're going to keep losing because their macro/micro/refinement sucks.
Honestly, because I need to have the cast unmuted in order to hear game sounds. Sound is a huge part of both playing SC2, and people who throw around the "JUST MUTE THE CASTER'S IF YOU DON'T LIKE THEM" argument need to realize that there are other reasons to have sound on if there isn't a castless stream.
On August 11 2011 21:48 Kashll wrote: You make some points that are good, and some that are bad.
All in all though all I have to say is you try to pick up a microphone and do better. Casting is notoriously easy to do in your head (when you don't actually have to talk to anyone) and notoriously hard to do when you have to actually speaking the words. Try to be perfectly accurate about a game while constantly talking and trying to maintain a logical flow of thought. It's pretty hard.
Seriously just listen to a recording of yourself casting or even just talking to someone, and you will feel self-conscious. Things sound a lot better in our heads than they come out.
Sure I agree, Tastosis get a lot of things wrong. At the bottom line they are fairly entertaining, energetic, and if you're a smart enough player (which you seem to be) you can fill in the gaps yourself. It certainly beats watching Brood War vods on Jon747 or Nevake while three people scream a language that you can't understand. (Not that I didn't love certain things about watching starcraft with Korean commentators, they have a charm of their own, but it can be nice to understand the commentary too).
Yes, casting is hard to do. No, I'm not saying I can do better. This does not address the fact that the criticisms in my post are valid, and that Tastosis can improve.
The only problem I have with Tastosis is how they just worship some players. In Bomber vs Byun last month I was cheering for Bomber going into the match. Then after Bomber won 2 games Artosis was being so ridiculous saying Bomber is so far ahead of other Terrans that in the end I was hoping Bomber would lose.
On August 11 2011 21:51 Kraznaya wrote: This is pretty hilarious because
1) I belong to the USC Esports CSL Team and Club, and hang out weekly with them, joking about shit like how retarded casters are sometimes. 2) I was a masters Terran Seasons 1 and 2, and I did exactly as you suggested this season by dropping all the way to silver and winning games doing stupid shit like mass sentries to troll noobs.
IIRC, the CSL is still Brood war, is it not? or did they upgrade into SCII?
"trolling noobs" is a bad argument for you. You're really just drawing back in on the antisocial nature of your post that you're now being called out to defend. I'd wager a guess that you're particularly BM in your games, as well.
3) You're here ranting about my criticisms of a public figure, something that everyone takes part in from time to time, while you obtain to try to do some retarded amateur psychoanalysis on me. I mean, who does that? Sounds like you're the weirdo with too much time on his hands trying to psychoanalyze random people on the Internet you disagree with.
Keep talking, broceratops. All you're doing is just driving home my very standard psychoanalysis with defensive explanations. Did I mention that I'm in medical school? Psych profiles are part of my job. And you are fitting a very distinct mold more closely with every sentence you spit out.
Oh boo hoo, my post had hostile language! Who could've expected such when it was a critical post? Tastosis have thousands of people to shower them with praise and tell them what they're doing right. They need people to be honest with them and tell them what they're doing wrong.
Even more angry nerd language. Hostile language is different from insulting a person in a way that you have no insight on, no basis for even stating (have you SEEN him go out and party? I'd wager not.)
I never even said you should tell them what they're doing right. I said, very clearly, that you should tell them what they're doing wrong, how they can fix it, and why you think so (you don't even need to include the how to fix comment, though the harsher your language, the more necessary it is for not appearing like a retarded troll.) Calling someone a drunkard when it has no relevance to anything mentioned or inferred in starcraft is just fucked up. If you said my progamer friends were bad because they were drunkards who partied on their off days, I be sorely tempted to slap you.
It's called Tact. learn it, it's kind of important in life.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
You're calling tasteless uninformed, that he calls things wrong and that he lacks passion.
You're calling artosis biased but that he has improved since switching to protoss.
This was my response.
And I wrote this post with the intention to highlight ways that they could improve, and point out that they do mistakes, in order to try to improve their casting and dispel myths about it at the same time.
To me everything you said in the OP is pretty blatantly obvious :p. Criticisms to things like Tasteless not adding much content and randomly saying inane things and Artosis bias have existed since the beginning. It's really nothing groundbreaking you are bringing up here.
There will always be blind fanboys for everything. If you followed BW before, you know that there are fanboys for Flash, Bisu, and Jaedong and they are all irrationally supportive of their respective players as well as borderline delusional at times. If someone becomes popular, that's just what happens, they get blind fanboys. There's no reason to conclude that because those fanboys exist that most people think Tasteless is a strategical genius and Artosis is the pinnacle of unbiased commentary.
Really I'm sure no one read this and thought "wow, I've never thought about it like that before". That's why you are getting people attacking you for nitpicking because what you've pointed out just seems like pointless criticism that is already well known and accepted as part of their charm as a commentary duo.
So basically you typed 14 paragraphs to say you get annoyed easily by irrelevant things, and when you can't hear your game sounds you get really mad. Ha.
On August 11 2011 21:51 Kraznaya wrote: This is pretty hilarious because
1) I belong to the USC Esports CSL Team and Club, and hang out weekly with them, joking about shit like how retarded casters are sometimes. 2) I was a masters Terran Seasons 1 and 2, and I did exactly as you suggested this season by dropping all the way to silver and winning games doing stupid shit like mass sentries to troll noobs.
IIRC, the CSL is still Brood war, is it not? or did they upgrade into SCII?
They downgraded to SC2.
"trolling noobs" is a bad argument for you. You're really just drawing back in on the antisocial nature of your post that you're now being called out to defend. I'd wager a guess that you're particularly BM in your games, as well.
Wow, I used Internet-y language to describe something I did in an Internet game? How antisocial! I must have deep seated emotional problems because of how I behave in an online video game!
3) You're here ranting about my criticisms of a public figure, something that everyone takes part in from time to time, while you obtain to try to do some retarded amateur psychoanalysis on me. I mean, who does that? Sounds like you're the weirdo with too much time on his hands trying to psychoanalyze random people on the Internet you disagree with.
Keep talking, broceratops. All you're doing is just driving home my very standard psychoanalysis with defensive explanations. Did I mention that I'm in medical school? Psych profiles are part of my job. And you are fitting a very distinct mold more closely with every sentence you spit out.
[/quote]
Ooh, congrats on your medical school. Keep psychoanalyzing on the Internet, bub. Everyone knows that Internet credentials are the best to have for pointless Internet psychoanalyzing.
I never even said you should tell them what they're doing right. I said, very clearly, that you should tell them what they're doing wrong, how they can fix it, and why you think so (you don't even need to include the how to fix comment, though the harsher your language, the more necessary it is for not appearing like a retarded troll.)
Lemme see -> "mix good with bad"
Hmm...
It's called Tact. learn it, it's kind of important in life.
Tact and respect are reserved for people who have earned it. And you clearly haven't, no matter how many Internet credentials you conjure up.
All I got from your post is that you like the word salient and you don't know how to spell material. There's so much wrong with everything you said and I don't feel like writing you a book to explain why. If I had to take a stab in the dark I'd assume you're a pretty boring person. All in all your post is pretty bad.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: WARNING: THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG AND KIND OF RANTY
Okay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
First, I'd state that you are of course entitled to your own opinions and your arguments holds validity to the extent that you are showing your opinions via your observations. However, I would argue that certain parts of your claims are somewhat misleading to the readers.
Let's start with the first point regarding Tasteless: you yourself highlight the fact that Tasteless is a "custodian" role, a.k.a. the play-by-play guy. With this point now highlighted, let's look at your arguments: In terms of the "parroting Artosis" or "pointing out blatantly obvious mistakes", he is, once again, a play-by-play caster. His role is to simply show what is going on. This casting part is integral. Even though you or I, a hardcore member of the community, may not need it, overall his play-by-play style needs to exist just as much as Artosis' role as an analyst. Football, soccer, Starcraft BW, majority of the 'casting duo' usually stays in this casting duo style.
Tasteless, in your point regarding MLG Columbus and MMA's dropship playstyle, he mentioned the points where he makes because he himself is a player and he has played the game to the extent of the metagame. Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops? Why the drops are done? Drops were even more important and fragile back in Brood War in T v Z because they were scourges literally flying everywhere 1.5 times faster than the dropships, killing them whenever possible. To the regular viewers, they simply see drops as 'damage must be done to be paid off', so Tasteless, in my opinion, tones down his play-by-play casting to the level of the viewer.
Let's make more direct comparisons to that of Starcraft BW since they are both E-sport games that are broadcasted fairly well.
Starcraft BW in Korea consist of 3 commentators: 1 play-by-play and 2 analysts. This style is used, but the Korean majority never criticize the 'play-by-play' commentator. Why? Because he does what he needs to do in his job description: mention what is happening. Why should he analyze? And let's say he does analyze: then he is simply hurting the 'flow' of the casting trio, and thus should actually try to avoid analyzing if possible.
*Your argument of the point of "Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game." makes me want to point out that you yourself are doing the same thing. Please post your credentials and show that you are much better than Tasteless before you criticize him. You stating is saying that we the viewers should also not criticize players whenever we post on the LR Forums. Of course, the refutation might be, "oh but it's on live", well the internet is read daily and I'm certain that there are many who do read through the Live reports, so then in that case, we as well should never criticize or mention our opinions in the same sense.
*Then your analysis of Tasteless not having the same 'passion' for Starcraft 2. Perhaps this is true, perhaps this is not. We will never know until Tasteless himself informs us. But what we do know is that he is passionate about casting, he is passionate about E-sports, and he is simply not just 'cruising' through the fame that he has carried in the past just as Fruitdealer is. How do we know this? Because he still tries his best to fit his role as a play-by-play caster.
Another point that we should look at: "Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis."
*To you, as a hardcore member of the community, may argue this that Artosis "clearly superseded" Tasteless. Why? Because we, as hardcore members of the community, simply want analysis to learn and get better at the game. But I would once again argue that Artosis is doing his job as an analyst and that Tasteless is doing his job as a play-by-play commentator. So in no way has Artosis "clearly supersede" Tasteless in any sense. They are both just doing their roles. Tasteless "parroting Artosis" is, a point to you, maybe a mistake that Tasteless occasionally does as this goes a little above that of his role, but I could also make a counterargument that he dumbs down Artosis' analysis to simpler ways and repetition of certain things never hurts to help increase the viewers' knowledge. It may annoy some people, but it will never hurt the learning, which is what Artosis' role is for.
Now let's look at your points regarding Artosis. I will once again give a point to your argument: Artosis is clearly passionate and very biased in his casts. The most infamous example is that of Nestea vs SCFou game 5 where he was literally screaming his head off for the older veteran to win. But let's look at your criticisms. First your mention of the Keen vs Coca game. Do you know why Keen is currently at the fame that he is? It is because of his ceremonies. He plays occasionally brilliant games and his attitude is certainly entertaining to watch, but really? Keen is not the underdog of this group? He does not have as much credentials as the rest. Coca has shown recent strong performances in the GSL Super Tourney and to Keen's credit, he has also done well in the Code A's, but it is hard to see from an objective point of view as Keen not being an underdog. Alicia has shown strong games in Code A, and NaDa is once again, just as in Starcraft 1, the most consistent player around. So, once again, hard to not see Keen as an underdog compared to the rest. Perhaps not the best wording from Artosis for calling Keen a "scrub" or a "sneaky player" but he is kind of a human being... I guess he should always think about 30 seconds before saying something just like how we make posts on forums right? Of course, this might be a case if Artosis did it every time, but for the most part, Artosis criticizes with evidence behind his harsh criticisms. TheBest? Uhh Banshee control was slightly sad to watch? BitbyBit? Please don't start on this point. There's plenty of evidence of Artosis being too harsh, but for the most part, at least he has evidence behind it.
*Then the next part of the 3 naked rax is not an all-in. Korean servers are infamous for doing this and it being an all-in. It's hard to not see this build in a server where aggression is famous for and it's a best of 1 and not first think, of it's an all-in. At the situations where Artosis found himself in, and from his previous games he casted and his experience on the Korean Ladder, in my opinion, Artosis certainly had enough justification to call it an all-in at the time he did. So to simply assume this as lack of understanding of the game is kind of iffy. And he would mention that he 'transitioned out of the all-in' and at that point, it was true. From a look at it, it was an all-in. Artosis mentioned that Keen was even on SCVs to that of Alicia's. What does that reveal? He used his economy for an army, and spent no time on SCVs. That shows an 'all-in'.
Another fact to note is that Artosis sees something different from us the viewers. He can see what the players click, where they are looking at, and what units they are producing etc. That's why he has mentioned that Clide was the best player in the world: He was playing like the current BW players back a few seasons ago and had the mechanics just like that of BW Players. So I would argue back that it's not Artosis' bias, but rather his observations that are different from that of the viewers that has him mentioning these views.
So while there are certainly big issues with biased commentary, but at least Artosis can justfiy his bias and can, in his analysis, actually analyze.
Your final point regarding them being 'out of loop of the Korean scene'. I'd once again give a point to you: they both have been busy for quite some time casting IPLs, GSLs, MLGs, etc. Yet I would once again make a counterargument that their constant tournament castings and their dedication to their job (perhaps not the game) allows them to learn and give good commentary. They at least admit when they don't know a build rather than say that they know what's going on. I guess I'm just confused that you aren't jumping on this point about Tastosis if your final argument is that they seem so out of loop in terms of their metagame understanding.
Final note: please don't use ad hominem arguments...I mean really? Tasteless going out partying is hurting his job? He has done casting for quite some time even before GSL, so I highly doubt that he suddenly thought he could party and give up his job out of nowhere.
tl;dr: Chill out, they're doing fine. Besides your arguments are very nitpicky.
On August 11 2011 22:09 Artifice wrote: All I got from your post is that you like the word salient and you don't know how to spell material. There's so much wrong with everything you said and I don't feel like writing you a book to explain why. If I had to take a stab in the dark I'd assume you're a pretty boring person. All in all your post is pretty bad.
Materiel (from the French "matériel" for equipment or hardware, related to the word material) is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management.
Tact and respect are reserved for people who have earned it. And you clearly haven't, no matter how many Internet credentials you conjure up.
This makes me sad about the growth of esports. You're clearly a fabulous representative of a community that is obviously ready for the mainstream. And you must command an astounding echelon of friends with such an approachable, friendly attitude.
On August 11 2011 21:55 Jibba wrote: Saying Tasteless lost his passion is a polite way of saying he's a lot worse than he was when he casted BW.
Can we just get that out of the way already?
I think it's hard to say because his job is way different now than it was back then. As long as Artosis and Tasteless are paired together, you don't really need 2 people doing heavy analysis of the games.
There are times when Tasteless busts out a gem of in-game knowledge or something like that, but his general job right now is to "cater to the noobs" ( as he explained in S2/S3 ), so I think that's where his making fun of people who say he lost his passion comes from.
I do like the idea that someone mentioned that Tasteless could learn more about each player, what they do, etc. I think it would be challenging to get the Wolf-level understanding because Wolf actually lived in the FXO-Fou house, but at least like "Oh, this guy was practicing with X, Y, and Z so I would bet we see A or B builds out of him."
The OP itself is pretty meh. There's 1 salient point in it and a lot of misinformation or nitpicking otherwise. Artosis will always be bias, though, but he has improved dramatically in that regard. Constructive criticism is also usually not, by definition, using hostile language. That's kinda the whole idea.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
You're calling tasteless uninformed, that he calls things wrong and that he lacks passion.
You're calling artosis biased but that he has improved since switching to protoss.
This was my response.
And I wrote this post with the intention to highlight ways that they could improve, and point out that they do mistakes, in order to try to improve their casting and dispel myths about it at the same time.
Well I don't know if you realize this, but every human makes misstake, none of us are perfect, Tastosis may be so liked because of some of their flaws, its what makes us special and unique.
They're going to keep making mistakes btw.
Also they don't read TL threads, in fact tasteless stopped reading it years ago because he says you'd go mental in days.
OP I think you need to take into consideration that just because the community puts Tastosis on a pedestal, doesn't mean that they are required to perform at a certain level. They don't suggest themselves better than any other casters. WHICH THEY ARE.
I think you are under the assumption that because they are so renowned that their margin for error be much tighter than other casters. Sure they make mistakes, but they continue to move forward. What would you suggest they do? Call a time-out to repent for their sins? You are entitled to your opinion, one that you have already conveyed, and I respect that. But it comes to a point in time where you don't have to respond to everyone in this thread regarding their opinion. We know where you stand. You don't have to counter-argue every individual who doesn't agree with you.
The great thing about this is it is all subjective. You can have your opinion and be right, I can have mine and be right. You also don't have to watch or listen to them ever again. That is your choice.
On August 11 2011 20:57 kellymilkies wrote: First of all, it is absolutely none of our business what they do outside of their job. I.E you saying Tasteless is partying or drinking in Seoul.
It's called relaxing after work and living his own life.
I think Tastosis in general are the best casting duo because of their chemistry. No one in that sense is better than them.
Tasteless is DEFINITELY masters, (and a really good one at that) and he's a protoss player, plus he plays both zerg and terran.
I know this because I DO play with him and I have watched him play first hand as well.
His understanding of the game as a player is really high, and him not being an analytic caster is because of his ROLE as part of the duo as Tastosis to be the "life" of the pair.
I don't even want to discuss about Dan, because he is far-by one of the pioneer of being an analytic caster.
Predictions are occasionally wrong as a caster because the meta-game in SC2 is evolving really quickly and sometimes it is hard to predict something correctly since 2rax CAN be all in, it can be 2 rax expand, 2 rax into blue flame into banshee, I mean, if we are talking about terran play here, Terran is such a flexible race compared to analyzing Protoss or Zerg which is usually easier to read.
But hey, what do I know :p \0/~
Owned hardcore (explaining the notion of predicting what someone will do with a very branching terran opening) by the woman that everyone thought knew nothing because of her accent.
Fifty bucks says OP was one of the person who sent death threats to kelly when she was casting.
(aside) Kelly FTW. One of the few girl SCII casters/players that I -really- respect, because she doesn't throw around the fact that she's a woman constantly as an attempt to get fans. Hell, I had to look up and see who wrote the post when I saw that she said she played -with- tastosis. It read like any other solid personality in the community.
She doesn't throw around the fact that shes a woman? Her name is KellyMilkies, and she posed for FHM with an interview about Starcraft. I'm glad you felt it necessary to openly confess your love and respect for Kelly in a thread that has nothing to do with her.
On August 11 2011 22:14 Hermasaurus wrote: OP I think you need to take into consideration that just because the community puts Tastosis on a pedestal, doesn't mean that they are required to perform at a certain level. They don't suggest themselves better than any other casters. WHICH THEY ARE.
I think you are under the assumption that because they are so renowned that their margin for error be much tighter than other casters. Sure they make mistakes, but they continue to move forward. What would you suggest they do? Call a time-out to repent for their sins? You are entitled to your opinion, one that you have already conveyed, and I respect that. But it comes to a point in time where you don't have to respond to everyone in this thread regarding their opinion. We know where you stand. You don't have to counter-argue every individual who doesn't agree with you.
The great thing about this is it is all subjective. You can have your opinion and be right, I can have mine and be right. You also don't have to watch or listen to them ever again. That is your choice.
On August 11 2011 20:57 kellymilkies wrote: First of all, it is absolutely none of our business what they do outside of their job. I.E you saying Tasteless is partying or drinking in Seoul.
It's called relaxing after work and living his own life.
I think Tastosis in general are the best casting duo because of their chemistry. No one in that sense is better than them.
Tasteless is DEFINITELY masters, (and a really good one at that) and he's a protoss player, plus he plays both zerg and terran.
I know this because I DO play with him and I have watched him play first hand as well.
His understanding of the game as a player is really high, and him not being an analytic caster is because of his ROLE as part of the duo as Tastosis to be the "life" of the pair.
I don't even want to discuss about Dan, because he is far-by one of the pioneer of being an analytic caster.
Predictions are occasionally wrong as a caster because the meta-game in SC2 is evolving really quickly and sometimes it is hard to predict something correctly since 2rax CAN be all in, it can be 2 rax expand, 2 rax into blue flame into banshee, I mean, if we are talking about terran play here, Terran is such a flexible race compared to analyzing Protoss or Zerg which is usually easier to read.
But hey, what do I know :p \0/~
Owned hardcore (explaining the notion of predicting what someone will do with a very branching terran opening) by the woman that everyone thought knew nothing because of her accent.
Fifty bucks says OP was one of the person who sent death threats to kelly when she was casting.
(aside) Kelly FTW. One of the few girl SCII casters/players that I -really- respect, because she doesn't throw around the fact that she's a woman constantly as an attempt to get fans. Hell, I had to look up and see who wrote the post when I saw that she said she played -with- tastosis. It read like any other solid personality in the community.
She doesn't throw around the fact that shes a woman? Her name is KellyMilkies, and she posed for FHM with an interview about Starcraft. I'm glad you felt it necessary to openly confess your love and respect for Kelly in a thread that has nothing to do with her.
On August 11 2011 22:00 Honeybadger wrote: Keep talking, broceratops. All you're doing is just driving home my very standard psychoanalysis with defensive explanations. Did I mention that I'm in medical school? Psych profiles are part of my job. And you are fitting a very distinct mold more closely with every sentence you spit out.
no, even if you're actually in medical school: 1) you are in no position to diagnose/psychoanalyze anyone and pass it off as legitimate. 2) you have no job as of now.
stop flattering yourself.
on topic though the OP isn't wrong in his criticisms IMO, but no one has ever said tastosis is perfect. they have their unique style that many enjoy, and i don't mind that at all. they've become the voice of GSL for me and i enjoy listening to them despite their shortcomings (as do many others i'm sure). bias exists in any kind of commentary - to want one without bias is just wishful thinking.
i also wonder how you can so easily say artosis has lost touch with the korean scene based on his casting style - which has always been to root for certain players over others. lost touch would be more akin to not knowing who any of the players are, which i don't ever see outside of when they did GSTL where B teamers show up to play.
Edit: @Jibba, is that really fair to say about Artosis? I mean, he clearly wasn't the best of the foreign players, but he placed well at WCG more than once. Not the top, but far from just an above average player.
On August 11 2011 20:57 Kikimiki wrote: 1- No one's ruining esports. 2- People listen to casters they ENJOY, not casters that are the most analytic. 3- Why don't you do yourself a favour and post a commentary make a justin channel if you were that awesome and want to help esport and make some money...
Personally I LOVE analytic casters. The more analytic (with good analysis), the better. Sure I enjoy jokes and great personalities, but if that is all that a caster has to offer, I might as well mute the sound.
On August 11 2011 22:14 Hermasaurus wrote: She doesn't throw around the fact that shes a woman? Her name is KellyMilkies, and she posed for FHM with an interview about Starcraft. I'm glad you felt it necessary to openly confess your love and respect for Kelly in a thread that has nothing to do with her.
Eh, it's really hard to notice her posting ID on TL. How many posts do you read that don't have a special TL avatar with the name of the poster first? 99% of the time I read the posts and only glance at the name if there was something worth considering about the post.
and I like to think that the FHM gig was just for getting starcraft 2 more out there using what she had. FHM is very much not a magazine ready by gamers. I could be wrong, but don't hurt my dreams!
And yes, It was a side-note. Did I not say that, in parenthesis, just before my little extra-rant?
I'm glad you felt the need to rip on kelly, based on my comment (which was predominantly about the OP,) in a thread that has nothing to do with her :D
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: WARNING: THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG AND KIND OF RANTY
Okay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
First, I'd state that you are of course entitled to your own opinions and your arguments holds validity to the extent that you are showing your opinions via your observations. However, I would argue that certain parts of your claims are somewhat misleading to the readers.
Let's start with the first point regarding Tasteless: you yourself highlight the fact that Tasteless is a "custodian" role, a.k.a. the play-by-play guy. With this point now highlighted, let's look at your arguments: In terms of the "parroting Artosis" or "pointing out blatantly obvious mistakes", he is, once again, a play-by-play caster. His role is to simply show what is going on. This casting part is integral. Even though you or I, a hardcore member of the community, may not need it, overall his play-by-play style needs to exist just as much as Artosis' role as an analyst. Football, soccer, Starcraft BW, majority of the 'casting duo' usually stays in this casting duo style.
Tasteless, in your point regarding MLG Columbus and MMA's dropship playstyle, he mentioned the points where he makes because he himself is a player and he has played the game to the extent of the metagame. Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops? Why the drops are done? Drops were even more important and fragile back in Brood War in T v Z because they were scourges literally flying everywhere 1.5 times faster than the dropships, killing them whenever possible. To the regular viewers, they simply see drops as 'damage must be done to be paid off', so Tasteless, in my opinion, tones down his play-by-play casting to the level of the viewer.
Let's make more direct comparisons to that of Starcraft BW since they are both E-sport games that are broadcasted fairly well.
Starcraft BW in Korea consist of 3 commentators: 1 play-by-play and 2 analysts. This style is used, but the Korean majority never criticize the 'play-by-play' commentator. Why? Because he does what he needs to do in his job description: mention what is happening. Why should he analyze? And let's say he does analyze: then he is simply hurting the 'flow' of the casting trio, and thus should actually try to avoid analyzing if possible.
*Your argument of the point of "Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game." makes me want to point out that you yourself are doing the same thing. Please post your credentials and show that you are much better than Tasteless before you criticize him. You stating is saying that we the viewers should also not criticize players whenever we post on the LR Forums. Of course, the refutation might be, "oh but it's on live", well the internet is read daily and I'm certain that there are many who do read through the Live reports, so then in that case, we as well should never criticize or mention our opinions in the same sense.
*Then your analysis of Tasteless not having the same 'passion' for Starcraft 2. Perhaps this is true, perhaps this is not. We will never know until Tasteless himself informs us. But what we do know is that he is passionate about casting, he is passionate about E-sports, and he is simply not just 'cruising' through the fame that he has carried in the past just as Fruitdealer is. How do we know this? Because he still tries his best to fit his role as a play-by-play caster.
Another point that we should look at: "Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis."
*To you, as a hardcore member of the community, may argue this that Artosis "clearly superseded" Tasteless. Why? Because we, as hardcore members of the community, simply want analysis to learn and get better at the game. But I would once again argue that Artosis is doing his job as an analyst and that Tasteless is doing his job as a play-by-play commentator. So in no way has Artosis "clearly supersede" Tasteless in any sense. They are both just doing their roles. Tasteless "parroting Artosis" is, a point to you, maybe a mistake that Tasteless occasionally does as this goes a little above that of his role, but I could also make a counterargument that he dumbs down Artosis' analysis to simpler ways and repetition of certain things never hurts to help increase the viewers' knowledge. It may annoy some people, but it will never hurt the learning, which is what Artosis' role is for.
Now let's look at your points regarding Artosis. I will once again give a point to your argument: Artosis is clearly passionate and very biased in his casts. The most infamous example is that of Nestea vs SCFou game 5 where he was literally screaming his head off for the older veteran to win. But let's look at your criticisms. First your mention of the Keen vs Coca game. Do you know why Keen is currently at the fame that he is? It is because of his ceremonies. He plays occasionally brilliant games and his attitude is certainly entertaining to watch, but really? Keen is not the underdog of this group? He does not have as much credentials as the rest. Coca has shown recent strong performances in the GSL Super Tourney and to Keen's credit, he has also done well in the Code A's, but it is hard to see from an objective point of view as Keen not being an underdog. Alicia has shown strong games in Code A, and NaDa is once again, just as in Starcraft 1, the most consistent player around. So, once again, hard to not see Keen as an underdog compared to the rest. Perhaps not the best wording from Artosis for calling Keen a "scrub" or a "sneaky player" but he is kind of a human being... I guess he should always think about 30 seconds before saying something just like how we make posts on forums right? Of course, this might be a case if Artosis did it every time, but for the most part, Artosis criticizes with evidence behind his harsh criticisms. TheBest? Uhh Banshee control was slightly sad to watch? BitbyBit? Please don't start on this point. There's plenty of evidence of Artosis being too harsh, but for the most part, at least he has evidence behind it.
*Then the next part of the 3 naked rax is not an all-in. Korean servers are infamous for doing this and it being an all-in. It's hard to not see this build in a server where aggression is famous for and it's a best of 1 and not first think, of it's an all-in. At the situations where Artosis found himself in, and from his previous games he casted and his experience on the Korean Ladder, in my opinion, Artosis certainly had enough justification to call it an all-in at the time he did. So to simply assume this as lack of understanding of the game is kind of iffy. And he would mention that he 'transitioned out of the all-in' and at that point, it was true. From a look at it, it was an all-in. Artosis mentioned that Keen was even on SCVs to that of Alicia's. What does that reveal? He used his economy for an army, and spent no time on SCVs. That shows an 'all-in'.
Another fact to note is that Artosis sees something different from us the viewers. He can see what the players click, where they are looking at, and what units they are producing etc. That's why he has mentioned that Clide was the best player in the world: He was playing like the current BW players back a few seasons ago and had the mechanics just like that of BW Players. So I would argue back that it's not Artosis' bias, but rather his observations that are different from that of the viewers that has him mentioning these views.
So while there are certainly big issues with biased commentary, but at least Artosis can justfiy his bias and can, in his analysis, actually analyze.
Your final point regarding them being 'out of loop of the Korean scene'. I'd once again give a point to you: they both have been busy for quite some time casting IPLs, GSLs, MLGs, etc. Yet I would once again make a counterargument that their constant tournament castings and their dedication to their job (perhaps not the game) allows them to learn and give good commentary. They at least admit when they don't know a build rather than say that they know what's going on. I guess I'm just confused that you aren't jumping on this point about Tastosis if your final argument is that they seem so out of loop in terms of their metagame understanding.
Final note: please don't use ad hominem arguments...I mean really? Tasteless going out partying is hurting his job? He has done casting for quite some time even before GSL, so I highly doubt that he suddenly thought he could party and give up his job out of nowhere.
tl;dr: Chill out, they're doing fine. Besides your arguments are very nitpicky.
UTL, thank you for your post. It's rare that I can agree to disagree with people on the Internet, but you bring up a lot of legitimate counterpoints to the discussion which I can respect.
Regarding Tasteless: Yes, he is the play by play caster and the "jokes person" on the cast. I have no problem with this. In fact, that's everything I want him to be. My wording on these tasks may have been a little harsh in the post ("menial tasks," etc.), but I have no problem with Tasteless fulfilling these duties if he doesn't want to steep himself into analysis. The problems with Tasteless are twofold: he sometimes attempts to do analysis, and when he does, he does it badly, and his excitement and enthusiasm for the game often seems forced or misplaced. If Tasteless didn't attempt to do analysis, he wouldn't be making the egregious mistakes that open himself to criticism. If Tasteless is truly attempting to "dumb down the game" for newbies, then he shouldn't be blatantly incorrect comments! He should instead be offering relevant advice that is useful (Nestea is producing a lot of drones to achieve full saturation of his mineral lines, that will really help his economy, etc.). Instead, he's trying to call player tactics bad because of his lack of understanding of the SC2 metagame.
Also, my comment on Artosis passing Tasteless was based on TL forum regard for each over the course of the last year.
Regarding Artosis: You know, it's funny... but TheBest is probably a much better player than Artosis gives him credit for. TheBest has eliminated MKP from ICCup Korean weeklies, and is in the top 5 of the FXO-fou house rankings. Yet... Artosis gives viewers the impression that TheBest is a player, mostly because he literally only has three games in the Ro8 of the Super Tournament against MKP to judge him on. In fact, TheBest is a pretty good example of what's wrong with Artosis's analysis, not what's right: he has a distorted view of the Korean scene because he only sees what goes on in the games he casts in Code S.
Also, it's pretty strange that you're claiming that there's an all in that exists on the Korean server of 3 naked rax with scv pull against Protoss. I've never heard of or seen this before. Marine scv all ins against Protoss consist of at least 5 raxes.
Make it about the fucking players and stop worrying about this stupid horseshit. Why do you know tasteless drinks alot and what is wrong with artosis having favorite players. Nada is the greatest starcraft player ever so fuck off. Tasteless is comfortable enough up there to actually make funny jokes and have real interactions with artosis. Wolf and doa or whoever else make me actually mute the stream and not want to watch. I guess you prefer uncomfortable nerds with terrible jokes with phony hahaha laughs. If tastosis make changes to "improve" for you then I will like them less so would they be improving or not. Depends who you ask.
I just want to know what the fuck the pulse of the korean ladder means and how that matters. So they obviously should have no social lives, play ladder 6 hours a day so than can have a "pulse" on it, then visit all the team houses 3 times a week so they can know all about the code a players, and then of course do all their work for GOM. Not everything you see is going to be exactly how you want it to be but it might be perfect for someone else so get the fuck over it and stop watching if it bothers you that much. If there are enough people like you then changes will happen.
Yea and people need to stop thinking there was some kind of pro scene for brood war in the states and that tasteless and artosis were anywhere close to pro players.
Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops?
This kind of stuff is what's bothersome. Half of you say they're just entertainers, but the other half hang on every word they say.
Neither Artosis nor Tasteless were remotely close to being BW pros, no matter how many times they say it, and they weren't top amateurs.
In their primes they were at the top of the US scene at the very least, which is probably the furthest you could go if you didn't live in korea at the time. I just can't see them not understanding some of the most basic RTS concepts after being at that level (it is nothing to scoff at).
Tasteless's opinion is that losing so many units in drops/harass is detrimental in the long run. This issue is also nothing new. Bisu even says he's stopped his harass heavy style against zerg because he thinks it's not worth it most of the time. I'm not saying he is correct, but his opinion is not unfounded. I think it's silly to think he lacks such basic RTS knowledge after having competed where they have.
The bottom line is people have different opinions about things. The OP's opinion differs from Tasteless' opinion, that's all. The quote you are referring to doesn't hang on to anything he is saying, it's just making the very fair assumption that Tasteless knows that Terran's don't intentionally send drops around with Mutas around half expecting to lose them.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Saying that one is more important than the other is already showing your biased to a more strictly analytical cast that you want. If you have seen the LDHTV clips of Tastosis making jokes and talking about "critters" and random inside jokes, you'd realize that without their chemistry together over all these years they wouldn't be able to pick up each others jokes. This allows time to pass well between the games or in the boring start of the game... 9 pylon 13 gate 14 gas 16 pylon 18 core type of stuff.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
When he casts he is just saying that it is risky to do drops with mutalisks on the map, this creates suspense and has the audience questioning if it was actually the right move to do that particular drop. Tasteless does know that in the grand scheme of things that multi-pronged drops allow for an army to move up. Being a Master on the Korean server is damn good (KellyMilkies vouched for it) and the argument that you shouldn't criticize pros because you aren't a pro doesn't make sense. Look at any other sport, commentators are able to criticize peoples choices because there are multiple ways people can play the game. Arguing that Tasteless is ignorant or that he lacks understanding just isn't the case.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
This whole paragraph is full of horrible assumptions. Tasteless just wants to party, and doesn't have passion? Is that why Artosis talks about meeting tasteless everyday to talk about games, players and strategies? They stay up to date and talk about better ways to up their casting level. Tasteless is a play by play, captain obvious, make the audience laugh commentator. The cast has to be smooth, so instead of arguing high level stuff on air, Artosis takes the lead and tasteless props him up and asks him lowball questions. Saying wolf in this case just goes to show that you want two analytical commentators instead of a play-by-play.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
Casts wouldn't be smooth if Tasteless and Artosis were arguing half the cast, this isn't some US talkshow were everyone is arguing and trying to make their point.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
This is what I think of when you talk about being biased, Artosis is human, everyone is rooting for the players they like. Since you like Wolf so much, just look at him talking about the FXO players when someone else says that one of his players are weak or that they haven't put up results yet so they are unknown. He gets defensive too.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
Do you watch SOTG, all Artosis talks about is watching Starcraft II every day of the week and catching up on every tournament and learning the meta-game. He knew it so well that when a new TvT just came out that no one has ever seen, he said, "Oh my god Tasteless, both of these guys are doing the exact same build (was a two Starport 1 banshee 1 viking build on Xel'naga) this meta-game has just came up over the weekend because I've never seen this before."
His Zerg bias wasn't anything new back then anyway, Zergs were having a hard time to 2 rax SCV all-in and it gets frustrating when that is all you see. Obviously it wasn't unfounded either, because Zerg has been getting buffs ever since.
Anyway, I think you are just being way too nit-picky and that you actually want 2 analytical casters who get into a discussion where both of them takes sides and argue their points. This would make people everywhere take sides against who is right and who is wrong and would have people discredit one caster over the other because of their viewpoint. Bringing up Tasteless's life outside of Starcraft II doesn't show his lack of passion for the game. Some of your criticisms are fair but some of your points should be taken out and some of your other points need to have a focus on how to fix these problems.
no, even if you're actually in medical school: 1) you are in no position to diagnose/psychoanalyze anyone and pass it off as legitimate. 2) you have no job as of now.
stop flattering yourself.
Someone needs to put on his sarcasm pants.
I'm not giving him medical advice. I won't do that until my name has an "M.D." following it. Just demonstrating that I've taken courses devoted to the points I brought up, and was simply applying them to the logic that we've all seen in this type of poster. Believe me or not, that's none of my concern.
And for the record, my real job (the one I get paid for, though the hours devoted to medical school is far and away in surpassing a job as well) actually does require lots of psychoanalysis. What that job is, is none of your concern, because you're an internet master and nobody could possibly have a decent grip of the psyche of a typical antisocial nerd.
On that note, I have to get ready for class. Cheers!
Actually, this post reminded me of the one thing I really wish they'd stop doing, which is calling almost any heavy aggression build an "all in."
I can't count the amount of times there has been an "all in" build that didn't end the game. It really bothers me because it's not just them, every caster does this, and very rarely is it true. It's the type of thing I expect to hear bad players blaming their losses on, not from the entire community of analytical casters.
Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops?
This kind of stuff is what's bothersome. Half of you say they're just entertainers, but the other half hang on every word they say.
Neither Artosis nor Tasteless were remotely close to being BW pros, no matter how many times they say it, and they weren't top amateurs.
In their primes they were at the top of the US scene at the very least, which is probably the furthest you could go if you didn't live in korea at the time. I just can't see them not understanding some of the most basic RTS concepts after being at that level (it is nothing to scoff at).[
For a brief period Artosis was one of the better Ts in the US. But the US was worse than Canada and much worse than Europe. It'd be the equivalent of a low-mid NA GM today.
Seeing that line about how Tasteless doesn't respect his job enough made me angry actually. I think you have no clue of what you just said there, and the rest about him is none of your business.
The rest was mostly nitpicking in my eyes.
One point was good I guess: The part with the drops to gain a better position, alot of people don't see that most of the time (including me ofc) but I would say the following They are not on MBC/OGN-Caster level (yet) but they have the best chemistry out there and are, to put it simple, fun to watch.
ps: and wow your first response is some whining about TL standards -.-
Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops?
This kind of stuff is what's bothersome. Half of you say they're just entertainers, but the other half hang on every word they say.
Neither Artosis nor Tasteless were remotely close to being BW pros, no matter how many times they say it, and they weren't top amateurs.
In their primes they were at the top of the US scene at the very least, which is probably the furthest you could go if you didn't live in korea at the time. I just can't see them not understanding some of the most basic RTS concepts after being at that level (it is nothing to scoff at).[
For a brief period Artosis was one of the better Ts in the US. But the US was worse than Canada and much worse than Europe. It'd be the equivalent of a low-mid NA GM today.
Consistently making top 5 in WCG USA means he beat out the rest of NA, so IMO he would actually be the equivalent of like slush or kiwikaki. Tasteless was one of the few names that popped up when discussing top US protosses. But that's not really the main point anyways. Being even close to that level should excuse him from forgetting that drops aren't just for a material advantage and.at least make us respect his opinion.
On August 11 2011 21:39 Senx wrote: But this is the thing with the SC community, its constantly looking for flaws and hating on things instead of appreciating what we have or looking at the broader picture.
Luckily Tasteless, Day9 and Artosis have stopped reading these kind of TL threads or they'd probably commited suicide by now.
You guys need to take a step back and look at what you're actually complaining about.
But seriously though, HOW DARE tasteless and artosis be wrong in anything they say, I thought they were perfectly programmed robots. Flaws are for human beings, not for robots. This is pissing me off SOO much I have to go write a blog about it. Be right back.
Please, read the entirety post before making assumptions on what was said.
You're calling tasteless uninformed, that he calls things wrong and that he lacks passion.
You're calling artosis biased but that he has improved since switching to protoss.
This was my response.
And I wrote this post with the intention to highlight ways that they could improve, and point out that they do mistakes, in order to try to improve their casting and dispel myths about it at the same time.
To me everything you said in the OP is pretty blatantly obvious :p. Criticisms to things like Tasteless not adding much content and randomly saying inane things and Artosis bias have existed since the beginning. It's really nothing groundbreaking you are bringing up here.
There will always be blind fanboys for everything. If you followed BW before, you know that there are fanboys for Flash, Bisu, and Jaedong and they are all irrationally supportive of their respective players as well as borderline delusional at times. If someone becomes popular, that's just what happens, they get blind fanboys. There's no reason to conclude that because those fanboys exist that most people think Tasteless is a strategical genius and Artosis is the pinnacle of unbiased commentary.
Really I'm sure no one read this and thought "wow, I've never thought about it like that before". That's why you are getting people attacking you for nitpicking because what you've pointed out just seems like pointless criticism that is already well known and accepted as part of their charm as a commentary duo.
This.
Also OP, yeah they're not perfect but Tasteless is meant to be the general caster and Artosis is meant to provide the analysis. So Tasteless missing things in game doesn't matter. As for Artosis being biased, it either bothers you greatly or you don't really care. *And it was Tasteless who kept calling Keen's build an all-in and asking why he hadn't brought all his scv's - not Artosis.
I think Artosis being biased doesn't overall affect his commentary. If it bothers you, it's subjective whether you like it, like humour.
no, even if you're actually in medical school: 1) you are in no position to diagnose/psychoanalyze anyone and pass it off as legitimate. 2) you have no job as of now.
stop flattering yourself.
Someone needs to put on his sarcasm pants.
I'm not giving him medical advice. I won't do that until my name has an "M.D." following it. Just demonstrating that I've taken courses devoted to the points I brought up, and was simply applying them to the logic that we've all seen in this type of poster. Believe me or not, that's none of my concern.
And for the record, my real job (the one I get paid for, though the hours devoted to medical school is far and away in surpassing a job as well) actually does require lots of psychoanalysis. What that job is, is none of your concern, because you're an internet master and nobody could possibly have a decent grip of the psyche of a typical antisocial nerd.
On that note, I have to get ready for class. Cheers!
which part of your original post at the OP came off as sarcasm? you're delusional. you accuse him of attacking and insulting tastosis (i don't disagree with this assessment), then you proceed to do the same by insinuating that he's a typical basement dweller with no friends and acts in a mold fitting to whatever class you've taken - and this opinion is legitimized because of the fact that you're supposedly in medical school (which it isn't). and now, you become defensive when someone calls you out on that very fact. where's the sarcasm in all of that?
it's funny because in your posts in this thread, while being extremely defensive of tastosis, you've actually failed to rebut any of the OP's claims. instead, most of your posts have been thinly veiled jabs at his responses.
med school/future doctor or not, you come off as pretty condescending in your posts.
Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops?
This kind of stuff is what's bothersome. Half of you say they're just entertainers, but the other half hang on every word they say.
Neither Artosis nor Tasteless were remotely close to being BW pros, no matter how many times they say it, and they weren't top amateurs.
Fine fine~ I'll rephrase it: Because Tasteless as well as Artosis were aiming to become BW pros, they looked to study the games as much as possible. Thus, they should understand the repercussions and the benefits of continuous drops. Happy now? xD
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: WARNING: THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG AND KIND OF RANTY
Okay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
First, I'd state that you are of course entitled to your own opinions and your arguments holds validity to the extent that you are showing your opinions via your observations. However, I would argue that certain parts of your claims are somewhat misleading to the readers.
Let's start with the first point regarding Tasteless: you yourself highlight the fact that Tasteless is a "custodian" role, a.k.a. the play-by-play guy. With this point now highlighted, let's look at your arguments: In terms of the "parroting Artosis" or "pointing out blatantly obvious mistakes", he is, once again, a play-by-play caster. His role is to simply show what is going on. This casting part is integral. Even though you or I, a hardcore member of the community, may not need it, overall his play-by-play style needs to exist just as much as Artosis' role as an analyst. Football, soccer, Starcraft BW, majority of the 'casting duo' usually stays in this casting duo style.
Tasteless, in your point regarding MLG Columbus and MMA's dropship playstyle, he mentioned the points where he makes because he himself is a player and he has played the game to the extent of the metagame. Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops? Why the drops are done? Drops were even more important and fragile back in Brood War in T v Z because they were scourges literally flying everywhere 1.5 times faster than the dropships, killing them whenever possible. To the regular viewers, they simply see drops as 'damage must be done to be paid off', so Tasteless, in my opinion, tones down his play-by-play casting to the level of the viewer.
Let's make more direct comparisons to that of Starcraft BW since they are both E-sport games that are broadcasted fairly well.
Starcraft BW in Korea consist of 3 commentators: 1 play-by-play and 2 analysts. This style is used, but the Korean majority never criticize the 'play-by-play' commentator. Why? Because he does what he needs to do in his job description: mention what is happening. Why should he analyze? And let's say he does analyze: then he is simply hurting the 'flow' of the casting trio, and thus should actually try to avoid analyzing if possible.
*Your argument of the point of "Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game." makes me want to point out that you yourself are doing the same thing. Please post your credentials and show that you are much better than Tasteless before you criticize him. You stating is saying that we the viewers should also not criticize players whenever we post on the LR Forums. Of course, the refutation might be, "oh but it's on live", well the internet is read daily and I'm certain that there are many who do read through the Live reports, so then in that case, we as well should never criticize or mention our opinions in the same sense.
*Then your analysis of Tasteless not having the same 'passion' for Starcraft 2. Perhaps this is true, perhaps this is not. We will never know until Tasteless himself informs us. But what we do know is that he is passionate about casting, he is passionate about E-sports, and he is simply not just 'cruising' through the fame that he has carried in the past just as Fruitdealer is. How do we know this? Because he still tries his best to fit his role as a play-by-play caster.
Another point that we should look at: "Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis."
*To you, as a hardcore member of the community, may argue this that Artosis "clearly superseded" Tasteless. Why? Because we, as hardcore members of the community, simply want analysis to learn and get better at the game. But I would once again argue that Artosis is doing his job as an analyst and that Tasteless is doing his job as a play-by-play commentator. So in no way has Artosis "clearly supersede" Tasteless in any sense. They are both just doing their roles. Tasteless "parroting Artosis" is, a point to you, maybe a mistake that Tasteless occasionally does as this goes a little above that of his role, but I could also make a counterargument that he dumbs down Artosis' analysis to simpler ways and repetition of certain things never hurts to help increase the viewers' knowledge. It may annoy some people, but it will never hurt the learning, which is what Artosis' role is for.
Now let's look at your points regarding Artosis. I will once again give a point to your argument: Artosis is clearly passionate and very biased in his casts. The most infamous example is that of Nestea vs SCFou game 5 where he was literally screaming his head off for the older veteran to win. But let's look at your criticisms. First your mention of the Keen vs Coca game. Do you know why Keen is currently at the fame that he is? It is because of his ceremonies. He plays occasionally brilliant games and his attitude is certainly entertaining to watch, but really? Keen is not the underdog of this group? He does not have as much credentials as the rest. Coca has shown recent strong performances in the GSL Super Tourney and to Keen's credit, he has also done well in the Code A's, but it is hard to see from an objective point of view as Keen not being an underdog. Alicia has shown strong games in Code A, and NaDa is once again, just as in Starcraft 1, the most consistent player around. So, once again, hard to not see Keen as an underdog compared to the rest. Perhaps not the best wording from Artosis for calling Keen a "scrub" or a "sneaky player" but he is kind of a human being... I guess he should always think about 30 seconds before saying something just like how we make posts on forums right? Of course, this might be a case if Artosis did it every time, but for the most part, Artosis criticizes with evidence behind his harsh criticisms. TheBest? Uhh Banshee control was slightly sad to watch? BitbyBit? Please don't start on this point. There's plenty of evidence of Artosis being too harsh, but for the most part, at least he has evidence behind it.
*Then the next part of the 3 naked rax is not an all-in. Korean servers are infamous for doing this and it being an all-in. It's hard to not see this build in a server where aggression is famous for and it's a best of 1 and not first think, of it's an all-in. At the situations where Artosis found himself in, and from his previous games he casted and his experience on the Korean Ladder, in my opinion, Artosis certainly had enough justification to call it an all-in at the time he did. So to simply assume this as lack of understanding of the game is kind of iffy. And he would mention that he 'transitioned out of the all-in' and at that point, it was true. From a look at it, it was an all-in. Artosis mentioned that Keen was even on SCVs to that of Alicia's. What does that reveal? He used his economy for an army, and spent no time on SCVs. That shows an 'all-in'.
Another fact to note is that Artosis sees something different from us the viewers. He can see what the players click, where they are looking at, and what units they are producing etc. That's why he has mentioned that Clide was the best player in the world: He was playing like the current BW players back a few seasons ago and had the mechanics just like that of BW Players. So I would argue back that it's not Artosis' bias, but rather his observations that are different from that of the viewers that has him mentioning these views.
So while there are certainly big issues with biased commentary, but at least Artosis can justfiy his bias and can, in his analysis, actually analyze.
Your final point regarding them being 'out of loop of the Korean scene'. I'd once again give a point to you: they both have been busy for quite some time casting IPLs, GSLs, MLGs, etc. Yet I would once again make a counterargument that their constant tournament castings and their dedication to their job (perhaps not the game) allows them to learn and give good commentary. They at least admit when they don't know a build rather than say that they know what's going on. I guess I'm just confused that you aren't jumping on this point about Tastosis if your final argument is that they seem so out of loop in terms of their metagame understanding.
Final note: please don't use ad hominem arguments...I mean really? Tasteless going out partying is hurting his job? He has done casting for quite some time even before GSL, so I highly doubt that he suddenly thought he could party and give up his job out of nowhere.
tl;dr: Chill out, they're doing fine. Besides your arguments are very nitpicky.
UTL, thank you for your post. It's rare that I can agree to disagree with people on the Internet, but you bring up a lot of legitimate counterpoints to the discussion which I can respect.
Regarding Tasteless: Yes, he is the play by play caster and the "jokes person" on the cast. I have no problem with this. In fact, that's everything I want him to be. My wording on these tasks may have been a little harsh in the post ("menial tasks," etc.), but I have no problem with Tasteless fulfilling these duties if he doesn't want to steep himself into analysis. The problems with Tasteless are twofold: he sometimes attempts to do analysis, and when he does, he does it badly, and his excitement and enthusiasm for the game often seems forced or misplaced. If Tasteless didn't attempt to do analysis, he wouldn't be making the egregious mistakes that open himself to criticism. If Tasteless is truly attempting to "dumb down the game" for newbies, then he shouldn't be blatantly incorrect comments! He should instead be offering relevant advice that is useful (Nestea is producing a lot of drones to achieve full saturation of his mineral lines, that will really help his economy, etc.). Instead, he's trying to call player tactics bad because of his lack of understanding of the SC2 metagame.
Also, my comment on Artosis passing Tasteless was based on TL forum regard for each over the course of the last year.
Regarding Artosis: You know, it's funny... but TheBest is probably a much better player than Artosis gives him credit for. TheBest has eliminated MKP from ICCup Korean weeklies, and is in the top 5 of the FXO-fou house rankings. Yet... Artosis gives viewers the impression that TheBest is a player, mostly because he literally only has three games in the Ro8 of the Super Tournament against MKP to judge him on. In fact, TheBest is a pretty good example of what's wrong with Artosis's analysis, not what's right: he has a distorted view of the Korean scene because he only sees what goes on in the games he casts in Code S.
Also, it's pretty strange that you're claiming that there's an all in that exists on the Korean server of 3 naked rax with scv pull against Protoss. I've never heard of or seen this before. Marine scv all ins against Protoss consist of at least 5 raxes.
In regards to your response to Tasteless, while he does make incorrect statements, I don't believe he makes them all the time. Once again, he may or may not be as knowledgeable as Artosis, but from what I've seen from Tasteless in the past and because he knows how to study the game, I'll give him some leeway and say he does make mistakes and sometimes he does do weird things.
In regards to Artosis: he does address TheBest on State of the Game. He stated that he heard from the FXO crew that TheBest plays verbatim: "Sick macro games" during practice and he and NoNy acknowledge that because TheBest knows he just has to win a Best of 3, they cheese. But from the games that Artosis has casted and has seen, (can't see everything after all~) he has to say that TheBest is pretty bad in terms of playing in the GSL. I mean...strafing a Banshee on top of marines while they are shooting is pretty.....questionable. So while I am giving a point to you, another way of looking at it is that Artosis cannot access all the replays that every player has and cannot watch every game. He certainly tries, but it's hard for him. This is more an appeal to him being a person with a limited amount of time, but he has also mentioned that to his knowledge, that there are almost no other tournaments other than the GSL in Korea. So once again, a point to you in regards to him maybe not being able to access everything because he does not know them.
Also, the all in does exist >.> I was sitting next to a friend of mine (silver league so take it with a grain of salt) and he got rushed like that in a T v P. (Another grain of salt: he plays Z...) However, I will admit I was literally laughing my ass off while this was happening because he was typing the sickest cuss words in the world while getting all-ined like this.
Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops?
This kind of stuff is what's bothersome. Half of you say they're just entertainers, but the other half hang on every word they say.
Neither Artosis nor Tasteless were remotely close to being BW pros, no matter how many times they say it, and they weren't top amateurs.
This ~~ But honestly tasteless deterioration as a caster started even before sc2 came out, at some point during the bw GSLs can't remember when he just seemed to stop putting any time or effort at all into his job beside actually showing up for casts. He didn't know which builds were "in" or which players were hot and so on. As a result he would look at a player performing a newly popularised tactical maneuver and scream "this is a terrible decision, he going to lose the game because of it!!" And when the player won and did the same thing again in the next set he would yet again repeat "Didnt he learn anything last time, those units are going to die!..." So yeah, "lost his passion" seems like a fairly succint way of putting it to me.
I think it's sort of a catch 22 situation. Either you're nto good enough to understand and tastosis will offer much more insight than you can, and once you get good enough you don't really need casters, so having casters with actual banter and chemistry is pretty much what you're looking for.
Not sure how healthy a thread is that is essentially filled with caster bashing (not the OP, but everyone's comments), but my 2 cents:
I'd honestly have to agree with the OP, I couldn't stand artosis in any of the nestea games from last season. "you have to attack him at 100 or 200 supply" --why? Is the game different because the player you're casting is really really good? And during the finals not a single word of analysis was spoken. Just praise that he went mutas or rejoicement that the overseer push was perfectly calculated rather than explain why it is great... it's just annoying to listen too and it results in people not knowing the correct time to go mutas, or the correct time to do a tier 1 push with tier 2 upgrades so I hit people on the ladder who go 2 hatch straight to mutas and expect to win.
Holy shit man, I was reading this and I was basically nodding my head because I agree 100% on all the points you made. I have always been very curious how people like Tastosis so much. They are not even close to best casters out there. Only time when Tastosis were acceptable was during MLG Columbus where they didn't throw around the stupid "jokes" that they normally do during GSL.
Good thing that someone finally said what must be said.
I've read through the OP as well as most of the post, however the main argument I am seeing is just hypocritical nip-picking. I know this phrase has been repeated constantly in this thread, but from my perspective I just see that your complaining about how the casting pair can improve, however if one of your arguments is that because of there skill there analysis is sometimes in-accurate, then what position are you in to comment on how they can improve as casters? have you been casting for 5years? do you know what it's like? I know how this can be seen as an attack on you however I just think instead of providing "constructive criticism" you are just slating 2 of the most well respected casters in sc2. As well as this, I also think your assumptions of tasteless isn't a good player and is the "lesser" of the pair to be ridiculous. What do you know about what Nick does in his spare time? Do you watch him play 24/7? Have some respect for people just doing there job and doing a good one at that, everyone makes mistakes and some of the ones you have stated cannot even be seen as "mistakes" from a casters POV, just variations on a very expansive game.
On August 11 2011 21:51 Kraznaya wrote: This is pretty hilarious because
1) I belong to the USC Esports CSL Team and Club, and hang out weekly with them, joking about shit like how retarded casters are sometimes. 2) I was a masters Terran Seasons 1 and 2, and I did exactly as you suggested this season by dropping all the way to silver and winning games doing stupid shit like mass sentries to troll noobs.
IIRC, the CSL is still Brood war, is it not? or did they upgrade into SCII?
"trolling noobs" is a bad argument for you. You're really just drawing back in on the antisocial nature of your post that you're now being called out to defend. I'd wager a guess that you're particularly BM in your games, as well.
3) You're here ranting about my criticisms of a public figure, something that everyone takes part in from time to time, while you obtain to try to do some retarded amateur psychoanalysis on me. I mean, who does that? Sounds like you're the weirdo with too much time on his hands trying to psychoanalyze random people on the Internet you disagree with.
Keep talking, broceratops. All you're doing is just driving home my very standard psychoanalysis with defensive explanations. Did I mention that I'm in medical school? Psych profiles are part of my job. And you are fitting a very distinct mold more closely with every sentence you spit out.
Oh boo hoo, my post had hostile language! Who could've expected such when it was a critical post? Tastosis have thousands of people to shower them with praise and tell them what they're doing right. They need people to be honest with them and tell them what they're doing wrong.
Even more angry nerd language. Hostile language is different from insulting a person in a way that you have no insight on, no basis for even stating (have you SEEN him go out and party? I'd wager not.)
I never even said you should tell them what they're doing right. I said, very clearly, that you should tell them what they're doing wrong, how they can fix it, and why you think so (you don't even need to include the how to fix comment, though the harsher your language, the more necessary it is for not appearing like a retarded troll.) Calling someone a drunkard when it has no relevance to anything mentioned or inferred in starcraft is just fucked up. If you said my progamer friends were bad because they were drunkards who partied on their off days, I be sorely tempted to slap you.
It's called Tact. learn it, it's kind of important in life.
What the heck man, it seems like you're just attacking the poster at this point o.o I thought he had valid points, even though he didnt have tact. You dont have to be polite to make a valid point (ex: idra)
Sure Tastosis sometimes makes mistakes, but as others have pointed out, they usually correct them afterwards. Mostly I like how they work so well together and are really good at filling moments where nothing happens with off-topic conversations and remarks. They're also just generally pleasing to listen to, compared to some other people that I won't mention.
Even though Artosis isn't perfect at analyzing everything, he's still pretty good and most of the time manages to recognize builds and tell us about them. I didn't follow BW much so I don't know how good Tasteless was before, but I still think they bring the best out of each other even though Tasteless might not do as much work.
As for Sigmund Freud here, for someone who's essentially pulling out the 'get a life' -card and telling someone to stop being so serious, you're taking some random guys opinion on the internet pretty seriously.
Aren't Tastosis the highest level commentator around these days? You'll be hard pressed to find people better casters than them, unless they're pro players themselves.
And OP, you can't just say with no proof, that 'ppls just blindly hang on to their words blah blah". I'm sure people can think for themselves, and I doubt it's the majority that falls into that category. Everyone knows Tasteless is the play-by-play commentator and Artosis knowledge is top notch for a commentator. Why is being biased so bad? It adds some flavour to the comentary. Every other sport out there has their own fair shares of biased commentator. Why does it matter that they have people who 'hangs on to their every words'? Let those people enjoy their favorite casters. If you don't like it, mute them.
I can't imagine how long it took you to write the essay in the OP, but what do you hope to achieve from writing that? If you were just venting, then this should be in blogs. If you have criticism about their casting, than email them list of suggestions/improvements you would like. Posting here will just spark a 'blind fanyboys vs haters' debate and achieve nothing. ARtosis/Tasteless already said they don't read TL thread anymore.
Posting this just makes you seem like a nitpicky basement-dweller with too much time on their hands and wants validation from the interwebz. Like I said, if you have a problem, take it up with them yourself instead of trying to incite a riot.
The part that amazes me in this thread is how readily this community bashes itself. Disparaging someone for putting too much time into discussing a key aspect of SC2 (such as casters) on a SC/SC2 forum is kind of ridiculous.
I personally don't think Tastosis is the best caster pair but they're passable. Even if they were unquestionably the best duo to ever emerge in all of time past, present and future, there's always room for improvement. While not all of it is constructive, there were a couple worthwhile nuggets in the OP.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: WARNING: THIS IS PRETTY FUCKING LONG AND KIND OF RANTY
Okay, after having my ears nearly bleed out listening to Tastosis attempt to GSL Group D on August 9th, I felt compelled to write up addressing a lot of problems I have with Tastosis casting. I’m doing this because Tastosis is a highly regarded brand name amongst foreigners, and their attempts at analysis often accepted without question by the community, despite the fact their casting is riddled with bias and errors. I understand that there are a lot of fans amongst the community who love Tastosis, not in the least because they provide “entertaining commentary” (which is subjective, so I won’t dwell upon that too much), and will dismiss this criticism out of hand. After all, Tastosis is theoretically good for ESPORTS, and hating on them is just uncool, or something. However, I feel as if blind acceptance of Tastosis casting, especially as flawed as it is, is a detriment to both the development of their improvement as casters and good analytical English casting as a whole, and so feel the need to detail the issues with their analysis.
First, I’ll address the much less important member of the pair, Tasteless. In some ways, I view Tasteless as the “custodian” of the cast, as he takes care of a lot of the menial tasks such as player introductions, play by play, and joking around about random things like critters (which I personally find grating, but a lot of people find this amusing, so more power to them and him), while Artosis attempts to do the real meaty analysis.
Tasteless doesn’t offer much at all in the way of analysis, and when he does he’s often reduced to echoing Artosis’s statements or pointing out obvious blunders by players. Tasteless’s casting is most annoying to me when he attempts to unfairly criticize what he perceives as poor play, despite the fact that his lacking skill at SC2 play and analysis put him in no position to do so. The most salient example of this, which keeps happening over and over again throughout their casts ever since MMA’s dropship style became popularized at MLG Columbus, is his constant criticism of Terran usage of medivac octodrops against Zerg after Mutalisks have popped (“I’m not sure he should be doing this, this doesn’t look like it will work…”). He has a very simplistic view with regards to the goal of the drop: to cause materiel damage to the Zerg, whether in form tech buildings, drones, hatcheries, etc. However, this is not the only way medivac drops can improve a Terran’s position in a game against Zerg. For example, if a medivac was at the other side of a map and was picked off by Zerg’s mutas attempting to harass a far flung expansion, BUT the Terran managed to move his main marine-tank army to a forward position against the Zerg and siege up, the Terran has in fact used his medivacs to great effect. It is much easier to tank push against a Zerg when you are doing multipronged harass to divert units, but Tasteless doesn’t realize this, because that requires strategic depth and thinking which he isn’t applying to the game. This is personally aggravating to me because in essence, Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game.
Personally, Tasteless as a caster reminds me a lot of Fruitdealer the SC2 player. Both are highly regarded for being basically the founding member of their respective profession (Tasteless the English Starcraft caster, Fruitdealer the SC2 champion), but time has worn them down and they seem a lot less inspired in doing their jobs than they did a long time ago. In particular, Tasteless had a much better head for BW analysis than he does for SC2, and he did it at a higher level, and his most salient points in his SC2 casts are often back analogies to BW. What does that tell me? That Tasteless isn’t really putting his heart and soul into wrapping his head around the ever evolving SC2 scene, and he’s coasting on prior reputation and experience to keep his seat warm. Throw in the rumors of constant drinking and partying in Seoul (and the obvious parallel here again), and I’d argue that Tasteless has been as disrespectful to his job as Fruitdealer has been to his (minus the blatant lying to sc2con, of course). I hope Tasteless either bucks up and starts taking his job seriously and quit to make room for a caster who actually has real respect for the SC2 scene (Wolf comes to mind).
With all that said, most of my issues with regards to Tastosis have to do with Artosis. Although probably the lesser half of the archon by reputation at the inception of GSL, Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis. Adding that to the fact that Tasteless basically parrots Artosis’s opinion as much as possible, and it’s clear that any deep rooted issues with the cast begin and end with Artosis. While Artosis’s attempts to provide analysis are commendable, there are a gamut of issues involved.
If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
This isn’t to say Artosis hasn’t improved at all since GSL’s inception. In fact, his biases used to be much more blatant, and I often had to mute the cast whenever a zerg was playing due to ridiculously one sided nature of his casts. However, Artosis showed commendable dedication toward improving his casting by switching to Protoss so he could have a less biased perspective on the metagame. I hope that he takes these criticisms about bias and lack of metagame knowledge hampering his analysis with the same amount of heart.
Inb4 tl;dr, YOU’RE RUINING ESPORTS, etc.
First, I'd state that you are of course entitled to your own opinions and your arguments holds validity to the extent that you are showing your opinions via your observations. However, I would argue that certain parts of your claims are somewhat misleading to the readers.
Let's start with the first point regarding Tasteless: you yourself highlight the fact that Tasteless is a "custodian" role, a.k.a. the play-by-play guy. With this point now highlighted, let's look at your arguments: In terms of the "parroting Artosis" or "pointing out blatantly obvious mistakes", he is, once again, a play-by-play caster. His role is to simply show what is going on. This casting part is integral. Even though you or I, a hardcore member of the community, may not need it, overall his play-by-play style needs to exist just as much as Artosis' role as an analyst. Football, soccer, Starcraft BW, majority of the 'casting duo' usually stays in this casting duo style.
Tasteless, in your point regarding MLG Columbus and MMA's dropship playstyle, he mentioned the points where he makes because he himself is a player and he has played the game to the extent of the metagame. Do you honestly believe that Tasteless, a Starcraft BW professional player, does not know the importance of drops? Why the drops are done? Drops were even more important and fragile back in Brood War in T v Z because they were scourges literally flying everywhere 1.5 times faster than the dropships, killing them whenever possible. To the regular viewers, they simply see drops as 'damage must be done to be paid off', so Tasteless, in my opinion, tones down his play-by-play casting to the level of the viewer.
Let's make more direct comparisons to that of Starcraft BW since they are both E-sport games that are broadcasted fairly well.
Starcraft BW in Korea consist of 3 commentators: 1 play-by-play and 2 analysts. This style is used, but the Korean majority never criticize the 'play-by-play' commentator. Why? Because he does what he needs to do in his job description: mention what is happening. Why should he analyze? And let's say he does analyze: then he is simply hurting the 'flow' of the casting trio, and thus should actually try to avoid analyzing if possible.
*Your argument of the point of "Tasteless is criticizing players who are far better than him for doing a tactical maneuver that he doesn’t understand, and a wide swathe of the audience viewing back home willingly takes his words at face value. Talk about a step backward for helping the SC2 community understand the game." makes me want to point out that you yourself are doing the same thing. Please post your credentials and show that you are much better than Tasteless before you criticize him. You stating is saying that we the viewers should also not criticize players whenever we post on the LR Forums. Of course, the refutation might be, "oh but it's on live", well the internet is read daily and I'm certain that there are many who do read through the Live reports, so then in that case, we as well should never criticize or mention our opinions in the same sense.
*Then your analysis of Tasteless not having the same 'passion' for Starcraft 2. Perhaps this is true, perhaps this is not. We will never know until Tasteless himself informs us. But what we do know is that he is passionate about casting, he is passionate about E-sports, and he is simply not just 'cruising' through the fame that he has carried in the past just as Fruitdealer is. How do we know this? Because he still tries his best to fit his role as a play-by-play caster.
Another point that we should look at: "Artosis has clearly superseded Tasteless in importance, due to both Tasteless’s lackadaisical attitude as detailed above, and his own dedication to attempting to provide strategic analysis."
*To you, as a hardcore member of the community, may argue this that Artosis "clearly superseded" Tasteless. Why? Because we, as hardcore members of the community, simply want analysis to learn and get better at the game. But I would once again argue that Artosis is doing his job as an analyst and that Tasteless is doing his job as a play-by-play commentator. So in no way has Artosis "clearly supersede" Tasteless in any sense. They are both just doing their roles. Tasteless "parroting Artosis" is, a point to you, maybe a mistake that Tasteless occasionally does as this goes a little above that of his role, but I could also make a counterargument that he dumbs down Artosis' analysis to simpler ways and repetition of certain things never hurts to help increase the viewers' knowledge. It may annoy some people, but it will never hurt the learning, which is what Artosis' role is for.
Now let's look at your points regarding Artosis. I will once again give a point to your argument: Artosis is clearly passionate and very biased in his casts. The most infamous example is that of Nestea vs SCFou game 5 where he was literally screaming his head off for the older veteran to win. But let's look at your criticisms. First your mention of the Keen vs Coca game. Do you know why Keen is currently at the fame that he is? It is because of his ceremonies. He plays occasionally brilliant games and his attitude is certainly entertaining to watch, but really? Keen is not the underdog of this group? He does not have as much credentials as the rest. Coca has shown recent strong performances in the GSL Super Tourney and to Keen's credit, he has also done well in the Code A's, but it is hard to see from an objective point of view as Keen not being an underdog. Alicia has shown strong games in Code A, and NaDa is once again, just as in Starcraft 1, the most consistent player around. So, once again, hard to not see Keen as an underdog compared to the rest. Perhaps not the best wording from Artosis for calling Keen a "scrub" or a "sneaky player" but he is kind of a human being... I guess he should always think about 30 seconds before saying something just like how we make posts on forums right? Of course, this might be a case if Artosis did it every time, but for the most part, Artosis criticizes with evidence behind his harsh criticisms. TheBest? Uhh Banshee control was slightly sad to watch? BitbyBit? Please don't start on this point. There's plenty of evidence of Artosis being too harsh, but for the most part, at least he has evidence behind it.
*Then the next part of the 3 naked rax is not an all-in. Korean servers are infamous for doing this and it being an all-in. It's hard to not see this build in a server where aggression is famous for and it's a best of 1 and not first think, of it's an all-in. At the situations where Artosis found himself in, and from his previous games he casted and his experience on the Korean Ladder, in my opinion, Artosis certainly had enough justification to call it an all-in at the time he did. So to simply assume this as lack of understanding of the game is kind of iffy. And he would mention that he 'transitioned out of the all-in' and at that point, it was true. From a look at it, it was an all-in. Artosis mentioned that Keen was even on SCVs to that of Alicia's. What does that reveal? He used his economy for an army, and spent no time on SCVs. That shows an 'all-in'.
Another fact to note is that Artosis sees something different from us the viewers. He can see what the players click, where they are looking at, and what units they are producing etc. That's why he has mentioned that Clide was the best player in the world: He was playing like the current BW players back a few seasons ago and had the mechanics just like that of BW Players. So I would argue back that it's not Artosis' bias, but rather his observations that are different from that of the viewers that has him mentioning these views.
So while there are certainly big issues with biased commentary, but at least Artosis can justfiy his bias and can, in his analysis, actually analyze.
Your final point regarding them being 'out of loop of the Korean scene'. I'd once again give a point to you: they both have been busy for quite some time casting IPLs, GSLs, MLGs, etc. Yet I would once again make a counterargument that their constant tournament castings and their dedication to their job (perhaps not the game) allows them to learn and give good commentary. They at least admit when they don't know a build rather than say that they know what's going on. I guess I'm just confused that you aren't jumping on this point about Tastosis if your final argument is that they seem so out of loop in terms of their metagame understanding.
Final note: please don't use ad hominem arguments...I mean really? Tasteless going out partying is hurting his job? He has done casting for quite some time even before GSL, so I highly doubt that he suddenly thought he could party and give up his job out of nowhere.
tl;dr: Chill out, they're doing fine. Besides your arguments are very nitpicky.
UTL, thank you for your post. It's rare that I can agree to disagree with people on the Internet, but you bring up a lot of legitimate counterpoints to the discussion which I can respect.
Regarding Tasteless: Yes, he is the play by play caster and the "jokes person" on the cast. I have no problem with this. In fact, that's everything I want him to be. My wording on these tasks may have been a little harsh in the post ("menial tasks," etc.), but I have no problem with Tasteless fulfilling these duties if he doesn't want to steep himself into analysis. The problems with Tasteless are twofold: he sometimes attempts to do analysis, and when he does, he does it badly, and his excitement and enthusiasm for the game often seems forced or misplaced. If Tasteless didn't attempt to do analysis, he wouldn't be making the egregious mistakes that open himself to criticism. If Tasteless is truly attempting to "dumb down the game" for newbies, then he shouldn't be blatantly incorrect comments! He should instead be offering relevant advice that is useful (Nestea is producing a lot of drones to achieve full saturation of his mineral lines, that will really help his economy, etc.). Instead, he's trying to call player tactics bad because of his lack of understanding of the SC2 metagame.
Also, my comment on Artosis passing Tasteless was based on TL forum regard for each over the course of the last year.
Regarding Artosis: You know, it's funny... but TheBest is probably a much better player than Artosis gives him credit for. TheBest has eliminated MKP from ICCup Korean weeklies, and is in the top 5 of the FXO-fou house rankings. Yet... Artosis gives viewers the impression that TheBest is a player, mostly because he literally only has three games in the Ro8 of the Super Tournament against MKP to judge him on. In fact, TheBest is a pretty good example of what's wrong with Artosis's analysis, not what's right: he has a distorted view of the Korean scene because he only sees what goes on in the games he casts in Code S.
Also, it's pretty strange that you're claiming that there's an all in that exists on the Korean server of 3 naked rax with scv pull against Protoss. I've never heard of or seen this before. Marine scv all ins against Protoss consist of at least 5 raxes.
I have one question to ask about the mistakes that Artosis and Tasteless make. Are you sure this isn't a case of confirmation bias on your part?
See, I actually agree with the notion that Artosis can be biased at times (fairly often depending on the match), but I disagree on the amount of mistakes that you think they make. This just seems like a situation where the mistakes the casters make are always going to be more obvious then the times that they are right. Caster A says X will happen. Y happens, and you go "that is not X", so it becomes more memorable. Compare that with Caster A says X will happen and X happens. Most people don't think "ooh he was right", they just move on to the next part of the cast.
Another thing I notice is for example the fact that Artosis is constantly talking about how he tries to watch all the VODs he can to stay up to date with both the pro players and the current builds being used. I've also hear him mention on State of the Game a number of times how a certain build is being used by X race on the Korean server, something that in North America isn't being used. Either you haven't heard Artosis say these things, you have forgotten, or you saying that he actually doesn't play enough ladder to know these builds and doesn't watch that many VODs, i.e. calling him a liar.
I ask about your confirmation bias because I started focusing on Tasteless's casting because a lot of people call him a play-by-play guy so often, but I started noticing that he does a fair bit of analysis, and he often does it well and gets it right. It isn't memorable, because mistakes are more memorable and Tasteless usually says things in a matter of fact voice, whereas Artosis comments on a build usually have more flare. Tasteless reserves his flare for PandaBearGuy it seems (I don't know why). I think a lot of people underestimate Tasteless's knowledge of the game. The other day for a Gorup A or Group B game Tasteless called out a build in I think a TvT and he called it out pretty well.
I would also point out that during the MMA/Nestea match, there was definitely bias for Nestea during that from Artosis, and even Tasteless, but by the end of the match they gave respect to MMA for tearing apart Nestea with his drops.
All of your argument seems to have been from group D, which I haven't watched, but it seems to me you are taking one day of casting and make generalizations about their state of casting. It is just too convenient. The fact that you used to mute Artosis for being biased says to me that you are looking for criticism in places where it perhaps does not exist, and you perhaps avoid the positive points when you see them, i.e. confirmation bias.
only the best casters to ever do it. i mean look how terrible wolf and moletrap are. specifially Mr.KNOW IT ALL wolf.. sooooo annoying. artosis gives pro insight while tasteless is amazing and hilarious and the two of them together are the best... i consider your long post a troll even though it took you decent time to put it together
I don't play this game and to be completely honest, I have no idea whether any given non-pro caster knows what he's talking about and I don't really trust the community opinion on it. Not so long ago Tastosis was considered the pinnacle of analysis but now half the thread says that's not the point, they're entertainment casters? And another half says no that's not right they do have good analysis? Stuff like this is why I just go "fuck it, watching Totalbiscuit suck at SC2".
On August 12 2011 14:09 Redmark wrote: I don't play this game and to be completely honest, I have no idea whether any given non-pro caster knows what he's talking about and I don't really trust the community opinion on it. Not so long ago Tastosis was considered the pinnacle of analysis but now half the thread says that's not the point, they're entertainment casters? And another half says no that's not right they do have good analysis? Stuff like this is why I just go "fuck it, watching Totalbiscuit suck at SC2".
People are self-professed gods and superior enlightened beings regarding the higher workings of SC2.
In other words, they're viewing the game from their perspective and understanding as a player, and venomously hating casters that make comments that don't align perfectly with those preset views. This just implies a failure of players to understand both the fact that they are watching the games through a certain lens, and that casters are casting through a certain lens. Every person will have different natural and instinctual thoughts when they watch based off the distinct individual experiences they have had. Much of the time, some common things will end up being agreeable between you and the caster.
Another part, of course, is that some casters may give "better" performances one game or another. Sometimes, HD is a very good caster in my eyes, but I do see times where he makes cringe-worthy comments. Even the best can be prone to it. Of course, lots of people have trouble with accepting the variable nature of those performances, insisting "oh this caster ALWAYS does bad x, y, z," when in reality, that may be the case that the caster made such screwups a number more than not in recent games.
As always, I'm confused why people don't listen to the advice that admins of TL have to almost ALWAYS put in the white boxes for LR threads of tournaments: to just be positive and enjoy the games.
On August 12 2011 01:14 me_viet wrote: Aren't Tastosis the highest level commentator around these days? You'll be hard pressed to find people better casters than them, unless they're pro players themselves.
They are the best commentating duo right now. They're pretty mediocre though. It's just that everyone else is so bad in comparison.
It's not common that you have someone who has the time and ability to play SC2 at a high level, have good enough character and speaking skills to cast well, and maintain in-depth knowledge about the scene, kept up to date for long periods of time.
Tastosis is the best we have, but SC2 is full of commentators sorely lacking in one or many of the above which make their flaws seem minor. It's not a huge surprise - pretty much all the high-profile casters are ascended amateurs and thus aren't going to be, in the end, totally comparable to professional sportscasters.
I still enjoy Tastosis games whenever they come on.
What the heck man, it seems like you're just attacking the poster at this point o.o I thought he had valid points, even though he didnt have tact. You dont have to be polite to make a valid point (ex: idra)
The only way to stop these BM morons is to ostracize them. And maybe, just maybe, by shoving his own stupid circular logic back into his face, even if he doesn't admit it here, he might look back at himself and say "fuck, I really do come across as a dick."
and don't get me started on idra. I genuinely like the guy, but for fuck's sakes, grow a sack and act like a human being with some sportsmanship. I'm sure I could get along with him just dandy in person, so why can't I through the internet?
for e-sports to truly grow, the public needs to not view us as the angry, raging basement dwellers that the OP (and idra, BTW) portray.
On August 12 2011 16:30 blabber wrote: They are the best commentating duo right now. They're pretty mediocre though. It's just that everyone else is so bad in comparison.
not that I disagree (I personally think QXC is my favorite caster) but what makes them mediocre if they're the best? That's setting a pretty arbitrary bar.
On August 12 2011 16:30 blabber wrote: They are the best commentating duo right now. They're pretty mediocre though. It's just that everyone else is so bad in comparison.
not that I disagree (I personally think QXC is my favorite caster) but what makes them mediocre if they're the best? That's setting a pretty arbitrary bar.
A lot of things about casting can be measured with some degree of objectivity (speaking ability, accuracy of casts, etc) or by reference to others in the field (SC2 commentators aren't the only commentators in the world, after all).
I do not agree with the OP, I have not noticed the AMAGAD ITS SO BAD kind of things the OP discribes. Also the examples given were not satisfactory, I could think of the same amount of examples for any other caster.
I feel that the OP might be too ignorant about what it's actually like to be a caster, and passes judgement way too quick. I've heard all kinds of casters say straight up bullshit, but from what I've been told that's part of the job, also especially with a co-caster you don't straight up call bullshit on what the other just said, it doesn't work like that.
Your points hold up if someone was actually doing a careful analysis of the games, but this is not the case, they are casting. And to me the insight they provide is good enough - telling us what they at first glance find probable is all they can do.
On a final note I'd refer to Chill's unbiased cast if that's what you so desire. Blaming Artosis for being human is rediculous.
What the heck man, it seems like you're just attacking the poster at this point o.o I thought he had valid points, even though he didnt have tact. You dont have to be polite to make a valid point (ex: idra)
The only way to stop these BM morons is to ostracize them. And maybe, just maybe, by shoving his own stupid circular logic back into his face, even if he doesn't admit it here, he might look back at himself and say "fuck, I really do come across as a dick."
and don't get me started on idra. I genuinely like the guy, but for fuck's sakes, grow a sack and act like a human being with some sportsmanship. I'm sure I could get along with him just dandy in person, so why can't I through the internet?
for e-sports to truly grow, the public needs to not view us as the angry, raging basement dwellers that the OP (and idra, BTW) portray.
yea kraz is such a dick. how dare he criticize tastetosis on valid points; i'm kicking him out of usc esports next semester.
Usually not a fan of these threads, but your points are actually valid for the most part. People assume such defensive positions against criticisms on Tasteless and Artosis, it's not very productive at all. The OP's suggestions could help improve the commentators, and each point had sound reasoning and evidence.
I have been a fan of Artosis' casting for a long time, especially back in the Brood War days. Despite some first-hand experiences of his bad manner online, I have always respected his casting. For me, Artosis' bias does not bother me as much as Tasteless' simple incapability. I view Tasteless as the main problem, not Artosis. I don't find Tasteless' jokes funny, his analysis are often so wrong, his exaggerations are tiresome, and his understanding of the game is simply lacking. I have always felt this way about him since Brood War. I like him as a person, especially for his hard work for the community, but I honestly have no idea why he is regarded so high in terms of commentating. He has never been good.
Artosis often has to agree with Tasteless' dumb analysis because he doesn't want to make him look stupid. This hampers their commentating as a duo.
EDIT: In my opinion, Chill is the best commentator around. He has the ideal balance of analysis, humor and other intangibles. (His jokes are actually funny/witty, unlike Tasteless and Artosis making critter jokes - hated listening to those 'tasteless' lines for a long time now) Guys like Chill and Day9 can't even be compared to Tasteless, and I hope there will be more commentators like them in the future for our community.
What the heck man, it seems like you're just attacking the poster at this point o.o I thought he had valid points, even though he didnt have tact. You dont have to be polite to make a valid point (ex: idra)
The only way to stop these BM morons is to ostracize them. And maybe, just maybe, by shoving his own stupid circular logic back into his face, even if he doesn't admit it here, he might look back at himself and say "fuck, I really do come across as a dick."
and don't get me started on idra. I genuinely like the guy, but for fuck's sakes, grow a sack and act like a human being with some sportsmanship. I'm sure I could get along with him just dandy in person, so why can't I through the internet?
for e-sports to truly grow, the public needs to not view us as the angry, raging basement dwellers that the OP (and idra, BTW) portray.
has it occurred to you that you're no different from the very persona that you're accusing the OP of having?
the OP provided an opinion, backed with what he deemed as relevant examples. now you and i may not agree with him but he has given us a quality blog post and something to think about. all you've done is openly attack the OP and implicitly done the same to everyone who agrees with him, categorized them into a subclass of "raging basement dwellers" and "morons", all the while not providing any means of defending your own point of view.
frankly, i doubt any professional will take criticism personally. tastosis shouldn't take posts like this and grow bitter about the community, they should be glad that people care enough to point out obvious flaws (albeit in this case, the criticism wasn't voiced very tactfully), and i'm sure they see better than anyone how they can improve upon. on sotg, artosis said something about day9/destiny fans being too hardcore, and i took it as a commentary on fans (such as yourself maybe?) who view their idol as some form of infallible god figure who can do no wrong. that isn't productive for anyone, and only leads to complacency for lesser people.
So I finally watched the Group D games and can now comment more intelligently on this. I'm going to ignore the first 5 paragraphs since that was ranting related to Tastosis, but unrelated to the Group D matches.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.”
Actually, both Artosis and Tasteless were wary of making opinions on Keen and Coca at the beginning. They were players from Code A, unproven in Code S. In GSL Code S July, Keen had lost 0-2 in his group to NaDa and Supernova, so they mentioned that as something expected of NaDa and not necessarily a representation of Keen's skill.
It was only before the last Coca vs Keen game that Artosis and Tasteless referred to Keen as probably the weakest player in the group.
Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot.
Actually it was Code A May. A simple liquipedia search could have told you this. I agree that the criticism is valid in terms of Tastosis not knowing that Coca and Keen have a history, but it was also two months ago, which means that it isn't that big of a deal (especially considering they are playing best of 1s).
Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Both of them were criticizing Keen's play on this map, Tasteless first and then Artosis. So again it seems you have some sort of bias against Artosis rather than Tasteless. Tasteless was the first to be wary about Keen not bringing his units back after the attack on the second base. I can't really comment on the TvZ winrate or strategies on that map since I haven't seen as many games on that map as I have on others, but I will say that Tastosis were commenting on the fact that you cannot hold a push against a Zerg with one tank in the open like that. One tank behind bunkers and raises supply depots sure (in the early to mid game). One tank in the open, not really. The criticism was fair and was not a nitpick. It can be argued that the push in which Keen stayed too long cost him the game.
At the same time, Tasteless spotted Keen doing a cool micro drop of marines to kill banelings in an inefficient manner for Zerg, which he praised Keen for.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Judging by liquipedia edits, on the 7th of June Jeymuelli adds Renaissance Nerd as a nickname for Nada (checked by DivinO), so it is a valid nickname for NaDa.
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
Actually, Artosis was more focusing on how it was an unusual build from NaDa personally, and then he talked a lot about how chargelots would be a good counter to NaDa's tank based army with fewer medivacs. Then they both talked about how it was just a weird game since it went into a base trade situation.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
No he did not. At least I don't remember hearing using the word sneak. I first hear it from Tasteless in the Keen vs Coca match but maybe I misheard. In any case, what he said was that Alicia has a strong PvT, so a cheese might actually be a good idea against a strong player like Alicia. At this point, yeah they are underestimating Keen or overestimating Alicia. Or perhaps Alicia really does have a better PvT than Keen (the point is moot since Alicia lost and it is just a best of 1). Again, even though I know you already saw this, Tasteless was the one wondering 2 or 3 times why he did not bring his SCVs, while Artosis kept pointing out that it was Alicia's loss since he messed up a forcefield. Artosis was still the one that called it a cheese first, but it was Tasteless wondering why he did not bring the SCVs. Tasteless thought that if the forcefield was not messed up, the build would not have worked as well without the SCVs. Bringing in the SCVs would have have made for a stronger push, even with the forcefield blocking the ramp, and perhaps won him the game that way (at least this is what I assumed/got out of that). Essentially, even though Keen won the game, both casters thought the game was going to be iffy for Keen if Alicia hadn't messed up his forcefields. Seeing as no one in the universe could know how that would have gone (since it never happened), I can't say whether the criticism is fair or not. But at the very least their criticism has context.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
I think Tastosis for the longest time missed the fact that he built another command center in his main. But I agree that it is not an all in. I will point out that at the time he moved out with his marines, he had not yet built the CC, so I don't know if that changes anything or not since I'm not too familiar with the build.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
And Tastosis commented on Keen keeping energy in his CC and building the turrets to completely counter the DTs.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
This is probably fair, but since I haven't been watching the GSL for that long, I cannot say how much bias he has against new players.
To be completely fair to Tastosis, Keen showed lots of poor play in his game against Keen. He let two zerglings into his base for no reason (one zergling on two occassions) with poor micro on the supply depot. The he also let his banshee be killed pretty unceremoniously and had a few times where his hellions did little to no damage. The sneak came at the beginning of the game from Tasteless, but he said it after the game because Keen used the Gold to win the game. I agree that sneak isn't fair to the player. But I think they were pointing out that it was less that Keen played solidly against Coca and more that Coca straight up lost the game due to poor scouting. His comeback in the second half was solid, but he definitely played sloppy during the early game, and a better Zerg would have capitalized on that.
I honestly adore Tastosis (their humor and chemistry is like the sweetest fruit to the otherwise extremely awkward and dull personalities of most other casters). Tasteless HAS improved since GSL's inception (he was on the level of Moletrap knowledge-wise during season 1), and Artosis has really refined his delivery and more or less kept up with the situation of the game. Combined, I feel they mix witty banter and analysis as good as most can get without both people playing on the grandmaster level.
That said, you bring up some valid criticisms. You sound pretty elitist (I mean that in a good way), and I really appreciate that you're willing to voice out your criticisms and what's on your mind uncensored. I have to agree with you on some points about Artosis, and if he were to read this (or in some way be exposed to this critique) and take into consideration your points, he'd be a lot better than he already is. That is a stretch, though, and I feel they're already at the top of their game as far as casting goes.
Good post, though I still fucking love Tastosis the way that they are <3
On August 14 2011 23:26 flowSthead wrote: Judging by liquipedia edits, on the 7th of June Jeymuelli adds Renaissance Nerd as a nickname for Nada (checked by DivinO), so it is a valid nickname for NaDa.
i can add in "lame wuss" under muhammad ali's nicknames on wikipedia but that doesn't mean it's a legitimate nickname. nada is either genius terran or otter terran, no one calls him anything else.
On August 14 2011 23:26 flowSthead wrote: Judging by liquipedia edits, on the 7th of June Jeymuelli adds Renaissance Nerd as a nickname for Nada (checked by DivinO), so it is a valid nickname for NaDa.
i can add in "lame wuss" under muhammad ali's nicknames on wikipedia but that doesn't mean it's a legitimate nickname. nada is either genius terran or otter terran, no one calls him anything else.
What I meant was that Tastosis didn't make it up on the spot a few days ago when doing the casting for Group D. Maybe they made it up a few months ago in June and it was then added to liquipedia. Maybe someone else did. I was just pointing out that it had been around for a while, so it was kind of a ridiculous complaint.
I also don't understand what you mean by a legitimate nickname. Nicknames are made by people. "Bandana Man the Toto Destroyer" is in my mind a legitimate nickname for qxc even though a bunch of random koreans happened to use it. It's not like everyone sat down at some point to discuss what NaDa's nickname should be and all agreed that "Genius Terran" was the only real nickname it could be. These things come about naturally.
I can't really comprehend how somebody is infuriated with Tastosis enough to write such an extremely lengthy blog... I can understand not liking Tastosis' casting, but that much? Sheesh.
On August 14 2011 23:26 flowSthead wrote: Judging by liquipedia edits, on the 7th of June Jeymuelli adds Renaissance Nerd as a nickname for Nada (checked by DivinO), so it is a valid nickname for NaDa.
i can add in "lame wuss" under muhammad ali's nicknames on wikipedia but that doesn't mean it's a legitimate nickname. nada is either genius terran or otter terran, no one calls him anything else.
Nothing else? Wooooow, how'd you forget Tornado Terran? My favourite nickname for him.
I agree with most of your analysis, but as many have said - I still find them the most entertaining duo. You have to realize that most players want to be entertained, and either won't notice errors in analysis or frankly don't care.
People like yourself are clearly able to analyze the game at a high enough level that you don't need Artosis doing it for you, so I'm not sure why it bothers you so much. Sure, incorrect analysis might "mislead" aspiring gamers - but anyone who has the potential to become a great player should be intelligent enough to take every bit of commentary with a grain of salt and do their own analysis.
I do agree it seems like Tasteless is abusing his position - and he's the part of the duo that bothers me the most. I find Artosis much funnier, and frankly it just feels like Tasteless has lost his passion. I hope he starts trying to understand the game at a high level....but I don't think it will happen.
I agree with the majority of the points. This is why I like to listen to day9 even though he's kind of annoying at times (repeats the same thing 20 million times). I think day9 has surpassed his brother in casting. AFAIK, day9 is just a better player overall and also has the same passion, so it makes sense.
First of all, I want to say that I do agree with some of your points (for example, that Tastosis can be quite stubborn sometimes, and do not correct their misanalysises). I do, however, find it extremely hypocritical of you to call Artosis "biased" and at the same time, in your own post, throw in subjective perceptions of Dan and (especially) Nick as persons. The part about Nick being out and "drinking/partying" etc. has absolutely nothing to do with him as a caster. You lost a lot of your credibility when you decided to include that personal notion.
Also, the part where you say Tasteless shouldn't critizise players because "he's no better than them". --Excuse me? If that indeed is your standpoint, then by the same standard you shouldn't be able to critizise Tastosis because you can't cast/analyze better than they do.
Moreover, I find it next to hilarious that you repeatedly bring out "Wolf" as some sort of good example, whom - iyo - Tastosis should take after.
To sum up: Tastosis have by far the best chemistry (and apart from maybe IdrA), Artosis is the most knowledgeable analytical caster. Everyone makes mistakes, no one's perfect. Deal with it.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
On August 11 2011 20:46 Kraznaya wrote: If you have any idea at all how SC2 works, it doesn’t take any effort at all to figure out which player Artosis is rooting for when you listen to him cast a game. He always has a rooting interest, and he will relentlessly note the “brilliance” of his anointed player while harping on his “uncertainty” about the choices of his disfavored side. This was plaintively obvious in Group D, when Artosis’s totem pole of preferred players ran something to the tune of Alicia = Nada > Coca > Keen. At the inception of Keen’s first game, Artosis immediately labeled Keen as the “by far the weakest player in the group.” Now, not only is that an erroneous statement (I’ll get to Artosis’s fast eroding knowledge of the Korean scene in general later, especially with regards to players who have not been in Code S long term), but Keen just beat Coca in Code A in Code A July and did an epic ceremony to back it up to boot. Artosis continued on to criticize Keen’s strategic choices, which consisted of hellion harassment off 2 base into a marine tank timing push designed to kill Coca’s third. Now, Artosis’s criticisms may have had some validity if they were playing on a Terran favored map, but they were playing on Bel Shir Beach, home of the 30% TvZ winrate, the bane of Jinro, and a map where it is nearly impossible for Terran to secure a third against Zerg, not to mention a fourth. Keen rolled the dice on a 2 base timing because he basically had no other choice, and played a hard fought game in which he ultimately lost. Interestingly, while Tasteless had a somewhat higher opinion of Keen prior to the game, praising him at the inception as a “scrappy player,” he was soon echoing Artosis’s sentiments and nitpicking every flaw in Keen’s play, presumably due to his lack of ability to win a TvZ on Zerg Shir Beach.
Before discussing Artosis’s mangling of analyzing Keen’s next game against Alicia, we first must contrast it by looking at a game with two players that Artosis respects, Nada vs Alicia. Alicia is well known for being one of Artosis’s pets, but Nada is a BW Legend, the Genius Terran (NOT the Renaissance Terran, for the love of all that is good and holy), and commands respect. Nada did a twist on the infamous TvP 1/1/1 all in, disguising his build as a marauder expand before switching add ons to arrive at the essential components for marine, tank, and banshee production. This was a creative build by Nada, but not anything that hasn’t been attempted before (for more disguised 1/1/1 all in builds, see MKP’s final against Sase at CPL China, where he opened marine octodrop + 3 hellion runby and fake 2 rax -> reactor cancel into 1/1/1 builds).
Nevertheless, Artosis continually praised Nada on the genius of his build, holding it as an example of good creative play. This actually isn’t a problem for Artosis when viewed in and of itself, but when you contrast how he analyzes this build to a disguised build by a player he dislikes, the bias is clear.
In the loser’s match between Keen and Alicia, Keen opened with a very unusual build after having scouted Alicia on close air positions Metalopolis and seeing Alicia take 2 gas. Having opened with the standard build for a 1 rax gasless FE, Keen opted to lay down 2 more rax for a total of 3 rax no gas upon completion of his orbital. Having seen this, Artosis immediately pounced on Keen and labeled him as a “sneaky player” trying to “sneak” his way past a “much better” player in Alicia by attempting an all in. Even after Keen followed up by planting a CC (thus making it a 3 naked rax expand), Artosis continued to label his build an all in and wondered why Keen didn’t bring all his scvs when he poked with his group of marines.
3 naked rax into an expand is clearly not an all in. In order to do a marine scv all in, you need to either bitbybit with your first 2 rax and hit immediately, or go up to 5 or 6 rax like TLO famously did against Idra. In terms of similar builds, it is closest to a 2 rax pressure into expand (zatic build, used very often by Polt in the GSL Super Tournament), or the 3 gate into expand that Protosses do. In fact, 3 naked rax is in effect the exact same amount of production structures as a standard Terran 2 rax (1 reactor and 1 tech lab). The build is designed to poke and pressure your opponent, denying an expansion with bunkers if he attempts to greedily expand too early, while remaining safe against all forms of pressure so that you yourself can take an expansion.
Why did Keen opt for this unusual 3 naked rax into expansion? Because he made a calculated read based on his scouting, opponent, and map. The game was played on Metalopolis close air positions, spots ideal for void ray play, a strong build against 1 rax gasless FE. Alicia is well known for void ray all ins (see his game against MKP in GSL July’s Code S group stage), and Keen scouted that Alicia had gone for two gas. In that position, it was a good read by Keen to expect a 3 gate void ray all in, against which he would have been miles ahead with his multitude of marines and ready expansion. However, upon seeing the fact that he was not harassed by void rays, Keen smartly used the ability of his build to pressure fast expansions to deny Alicia’s expansion. The fact that he was able to get up the ramp and kill a few sentries and probes was just gravy, and the build would have succeeded in denying Alicia’s expansion even if that had not happened. Keen continued to show savvy reactive play when he immediately threw down an engineering bay upon seeing Alicia’s low sentry count despite the quick two gas and lack of void rays, and killed all of Alicia’s DTs and wiped the floor with him for the rest of the (short) game.
Obviously, mistakes happen during casting. In fact, while watching the game, I initially assumed the same as Artosis when I saw Keen lay down 2 raxes after his orbital finished. However, when Keen did not lay down additional raxes and continued to bank up money, it was obvious that that was a gun ho assessment and he was planning somewhat different. However, Artosis never changed his diagnosis of the situation, continuing to label Keen’s build an “all-in” long after it clearly wasn’t, and only backtracked after Keen’s initial marine poke by justifying his analysis and saying he was “transitioning out of an all in.” Given that Artosis often has very tight strategic reads on positions, particularly in games with players he likes, such as Nada vs Alicia, I feel like his misanalysis was colored by his biases against Keen and toward Alicia, and his preconceived notions of Keen as a player, something that’s backed up by the rather unequal vocabulary that he uses to describe the two. Thus, with Artosis, the root of his misanalysis while casting generally comes from his biases. His biases, in turn, are often a product of his ignorance about players, especially new players just beginning to make a splash on the scene.
And that’s the last fault of Tastosis. They no longer have any finger on the pulse of the Korean SC2 scene, on what is going on the Korean ladder and who’s making a name for himself in Code A, GSTL, or even Korean Iccup Weeklys. Back in the Open Seasons, this was much more excusable, given the less structured nature of the scene and lesser expectations for good reporting. Now, though, we have people like Wolf (note: yes, Wolf has his own biases and misanalyses, but that’s another story for another day) giving us inside info on the inner workings of FXO-fOu, and all their practice partners and ladder opponents (which cover the entire scene). Coupled with the rather astounding lack of knowledge that Tastosis have of what’s going on in tournaments below Code S (I’m pretty certain that I watch more Korean SC2 games than they do at this point, and that’s part of their job), and you have casters with flawed impressions of what’s actually going on in the scene. This puts a hamper on their analysis, and makes their impressions of the metagame feel very dated as a result. Add that to the fact that Artosis tends to do a much better analyzing players who he knows and isn’t biased against, and you have a real cause for improvement in their casting.
So Artosis, what do you think of Keen now?
Man you should just stop lol. You sound so silly taking these random jabs at them. I'm sure if you did this kind of analysis for any other caster you could find instances of bias/botched analysis.
Gotta agree on the part with Tasteless. I really like him but his heart is still in BW and you can tell that he doesn't really like SC2 that much. I doubt he even plays it and therefore he doesn't contribute that much more than laughter while Artosis is the one carrying him with his game knowledge and analysis.
Man you should just stop lol. You sound so silly taking these random jabs at them. I'm sure if you did this kind of analysis for any other caster you could find instances of bias/botched analysis.
We don't care.
NO. If other casters are completely bad and have no clue about the game whatsoever they are FREAKING BALLERS, but if artosis / tasteless make a mistake they are EFFIN TERRIBLE! If you think anything else you're just a fanboy!!
No sarcasm: "Tastosis" makes mistakes.Yes. I agree! Still, they are the very best. The are no better casters when it comes to analysis.
Man you should just stop lol. You sound so silly taking these random jabs at them. I'm sure if you did this kind of analysis for any other caster you could find instances of bias/botched analysis.
We don't care.
NO. If other casters are completely bad and have no clue about the game whatsoever they are FREAKING BALLERS, but if artosis / tasteless make a mistake they are EFFIN TERRIBLE! If you think anything else you're just a fanboy!!
um, what?
the opposite is pretty much true
tastosis gets a free pass while guys like moletrap (deservedly) get shitted on
everyone should be called out for their mistakes, that's how you improve
Man you should just stop lol. You sound so silly taking these random jabs at them. I'm sure if you did this kind of analysis for any other caster you could find instances of bias/botched analysis.
We don't care.
NO. If other casters are completely bad and have no clue about the game whatsoever they are FREAKING BALLERS, but if artosis / tasteless make a mistake they are EFFIN TERRIBLE! If you think anything else you're just a fanboy!!
um, what?
the opposite is pretty much true
tastosis gets a free pass while guys like moletrap (deservedly) get shitted on
everyone should be called out for their mistakes, that's how you improve
I agree but you're just doing the same with Tastosis now and I don't see how this is going to help. Sure they say wrong things etc but pointing it out in a blog is not the right way to do it.
Tastosis gets away with mistakes because overall they are the best. Other casters are good too but there are enough terrible casters out there that get way more attention than they actually deserve because they just don't improve.
I think moletrap is another great caster that does some mistakes, too, but they are very much exuseable just because they are normal and not that bad.. The fact that people shit on him is just because it's the internet, really. And thats something you can't change.
Artosis comments on the 1-1-1 just proven that the OP is right concerning the fact that they're out of touch now... Seriously it was hilarious to hear that if you've read the thread on TL which make obvious points if you play terran or protoss at a decent lvl...
Screwing up that bad on the analysis, it was impressive.
I agree with OP's points, but I'm still more entertained by Tastosis than any other caster couple. In the first GSL seasons artosis was really good and sharp, with spot on analysis, while it was clear tasteless didn't knew anything about starcraft 2. I didn't liked tasteless at that point. Then they both were good for a long period, with tasteless finally knowing stuff about sc2, so it worked very well.
Then they stopped casting code A, then they stopped casting GSTL, then they even missed some code S days, so the situation now is that they don't have a clue about the rising players (see Keen), they don't know the player's styles, they don't know much about new builds and trends. It seems they're not watching the GSL when they're not casting it (at least for the majority of the time)
When they were casting everything they could talk about everything, knowing what they were talking about, they knew all the players. It's not the case anymore sadly. And now tasteless is a lot more comfortable than before and he often talk on top of artosis or just cut him to say random, basic things, and I hate this, because often he just cuts an interesting sentence by artosis to just say some "fill time"/basic/play by play phrase.
Despite all that I'm still angry when they're not casting and I like them, but it seems they're not as good at their job than they were some months ago. They're very good at making their random talk interesting and funny.
On August 13 2011 01:30 OneOther wrote: Usually not a fan of these threads, but your points are actually valid for the most part. People assume such defensive positions against criticisms on Tasteless and Artosis, it's not very productive at all. The OP's suggestions could help improve the commentators, and each point had sound reasoning and evidence.
I have been a fan of Artosis' casting for a long time, especially back in the Brood War days. Despite some first-hand experiences of his bad manner online, I have always respected his casting. For me, Artosis' bias does not bother me as much as Tasteless' simple incapability. I view Tasteless as the main problem, not Artosis. I don't find Tasteless' jokes funny, his analysis are often so wrong, his exaggerations are tiresome, and his understanding of the game is simply lacking. I have always felt this way about him since Brood War. I like him as a person, especially for his hard work for the community, but I honestly have no idea why he is regarded so high in terms of commentating. He has never been good.
Artosis often has to agree with Tasteless' dumb analysis because he doesn't want to make him look stupid. This hampers their commentating as a duo.
EDIT: In my opinion, Chill is the best commentator around. He has the ideal balance of analysis, humor and other intangibles. (His jokes are actually funny/witty, unlike Tasteless and Artosis making critter jokes - hated listening to those 'tasteless' lines for a long time now) Guys like Chill and Day9 can't even be compared to Tasteless, and I hope there will be more commentators like them in the future for our community.
I'm happy to see someone else make the point I am about to.
Tasteless is the problem. Every time a Kpop girl appears on screen he makes some dumb joke about how he wants to marry her and even after the joke has died he continues on with "i actually decide who i want to spend the rest of my life with by looking at 3 second clips at the start of starcraft 2 games". This is just one example of many a lame jokes, and while this issue is certainly subjective, I am not the only one to feel that way, yearning for more professionalism in his casting.
He constantly mis-analyzes situations and it's actually amazing how Artosis can time and time again come up with phrases that don't let Tasteless look like the fool he is in that moment.
It's actually come to a point where they almost NEVER disagree with eachother and do their best to find a way to make every one but the most obvious of blunders seem intentional. Now is leaving these mistakes unrectified good or bad? I don't think every single mistake should be corrected, because that'd take up the majority of casting time, but I do wish that in response to Tasteless' "Oh my god, Player X is completely falling apart", Artosis would - in case Tasteless is actually wrong - more often say "Well I think that he's actually ahead at the moment" instead of "Yeah those blue flame hellions certainly killed quite a few units" and then trying to mix in more unrelated correct analyses to elevate the level of the cast.
Tasteless obviously doesn't have his heart in Starcraft 2 like he did in BW. The only analogies we ever hear out of him are in relation to BroodWar. When asked what he does in his spare-time it comes down to playing video games that aren't SC2 and going out partying and then "some voice acting stuff" almost as an afterthought.
When Tasteless says "I'm gonna go home and play with THIS build", do you really believe him? Artosis constantly talks about watching VODs and how he's trying to figure out the current meta-game in Korea. The only thing we really hear from Tasteless in this regard is that he likes to do the Tasteless build on this map. Oh and he likes Cloak Banshee openers in TvT.
I don't want to say Tasteless needs to stop casting, because he's obviously very experienced at what he does but I think that
1) The stupid jokes need to stop Can you even imagine a professional sports caster from another sport talking about going on a date with Kerrigan? 2) The repeating of Artosis needs to stop try and listen for that, in every cast there's at least 5 occasions of Tasteless repeating Artosis' exact words with a slightly exaggerated inflection just seconds after 3) He needs to put more work into SC2 the Korean casters are all highly ranked Masters players and put their heart and soul into casting SC2, whereas for Tasteless it seems more like a nice hobby that he does on the side.
I would'nt have such a big problem with his casting if he were actually mature about reacting to criticism. But instead we just hear the sarcastic "All the angry forum nerds are saying "Tasteless has lost his passion" and "You're ruining Esports" hahahahaha".
Also: Who do Tastosis think they are, cricizing a coach's decision who to send out in GSTL, when they don't even fucking recognize so many Korean players before the producers blend in their name? It's actually kind of sad when I recognize many more players than Tastosis in a single GSTL match, even though I'm a college student, for whom SC2 is just a hobby. And it's not even an issue for them, they say "Well ... we don't actually know all of the korean pros by face".
On August 23 2011 22:45 MrCon wrote: I agree with OP's points, but I'm still more entertained by Tastosis than any other caster couple. In the first GSL seasons artosis was really good and sharp, with spot on analysis, while it was clear tasteless didn't knew anything about starcraft 2. I didn't liked tasteless at that point. Then they both were good for a long period, with tasteless finally knowing stuff about sc2, so it worked very well.
Then they stopped casting code A, then they stopped casting GSTL, then they even missed some code S days, so the situation now is that they don't have a clue about the rising players (see Keen), they don't know the player's styles, they don't know much about new builds and trends. It seems they're not watching the GSL when they're not casting it (at least for the majority of the time)
When they were casting everything they could talk about everything, knowing what they were talking about, they knew all the players. It's not the case anymore sadly. And now tasteless is a lot more comfortable than before and he often talk on top of artosis or just cut him to say random, basic things, and I hate this, because often he just cuts an interesting sentence by artosis to just say some "fill time"/basic/play by play phrase.
Despite all that I'm still angry when they're not casting and I like them, but it seems they're not as good at their job than they were some months ago. They're very good at making their random talk interesting and funny.
I agree on this post 100%
The last game was Genius vs Virus, and Genius lost to a 1-1-1 push, which can be only held with a fast Nexus (1 Gate, see Strategy forum for that) and the casting archon was criticizing Genius for playing greedy, while that was the only build he could do on that map.
At the same time, i don't know any other casters that can compare to them (except for Day9-DJ Wheat combo i guess).
I agree with this blog, I still think tastosis is among the best casting duo, but pointing out their flaws so they can improve is always a GOOD thing for e-sports. Tasteless doesn't need to be GM to cast, but obviously being so would add more to the cast. A lot of the problems pointed out are true but very hard to correct (in terms of correctly analyzing play). It's easy to watch a game carefully as an observer but when you're forced to verbally describe what is happening in an entertaining manner in a real-time game to an audience it becomes much easier to mis-analyze what is occuring. There is far less time to analyze what a player is doing at such a deep level and for most people the level of analysis provided is good enough. I agree though that if they could provide even higher level analysis it would be awesome.
I recall nony saying his teammates on estro would frequently laugh at the korean BW commentators because their analysis of whats going on is often wrong. The commentators are often ex-BW pros so I think its pretty ridiculous to nitpick on attempts at indepth strategy analysis. Its impossible to know whats going on and whats the plan. Only the player and his teammates most likely know. I still see this is endless nitpicking
I guess your options are 1) never ever attempt to give insight or 2) attempt to give insight and expect nerds to make threads analyzing your impromptu analysis
Although its very rare, artosis is the only commentator who ever says anything where I say to myself "wow, i didn't think of that" or "wow, i have never thought about that before" I never feel enlightened with any caster, not even day9. Its usually repeating shit i've heard a thousand times or insight on strategy i've had on my own. I think this is why I'm significantly less critical on commentators. I don't go into every single game expecting artosis to blow my fucking mind or to be 100% correct. Its usually impossible to even be correct because there is rarely objective truth in terms of RTS strategy of what is best and what isn't. its all opinion generally
I really appreciate someone giving a thought out criticism that actually cites examples, especially towards people who receive almost none.
I think it's about time someone explains how djwheat could improve, he bafflingly receives no criticism.
And less so but still somewhat importantly, day9, whose commentary has really diminished in quality over time, imo.
That said I don't think sc2 has a single commentator that understands the game nearly as well as a pro does. Artosis comes closest, but when I listen to idra commentate you can tell he knows what's going through the players' head and he knows how things will likely turn out. It's unfortunate that a person who spends a lot of time commentating would just be losing playing time, making their analysis worse, so we've got no one with pro player knowledge and understanding.
On August 23 2011 23:12 Montana[TK] wrote: 1) The stupid jokes need to stop Can you even imagine a professional sports caster from another sport talking about going on a date with Kerrigan?
I think it's hilarious when John Madden used to talk about food and turduckens.
Just fyi, Artosis watches the Korean Weeklies, he's one of our longest running fans....
Of all the major misconceptions in Starcraft this one is the worst in my opinion:
Conception: Casting is easy, quick, and keeping up on every metagame shift ever is also easy
Reality: Casting is hard as hell, consumes a TON of time, and keeping up on even one region's metagame shifts is borderline impossible in today's current scene.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Tasteless, and saying he is "lost his passion" or whatever is insane. You know why he knew more about BW then SC2? He played the game for 12 years and there was only one region (which has very limited amount of games) you had to keep track of. Starcraft has only been out a bit over a year, the game has changed about 100 times (between patches and style shifts), and there is 5-6 major regions you have to pay attention to with all different style.
Edit: Also for the Artosis is biased thing, watch a UFC broadcast. Joe Rogan is the worst offender pretty much ever of this, and the UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. It apparently is not a huge issue, and much like you ONLY the hardcore hardcore MMA (in your case SC) fans complain about it, no one else gives a shit.
I agree with many of the sentiments in this blog. Unfortunately, all the other casters are simply worse. They are light on analysis, humor, and credibility. With Tastosis, you are truly taking the good with the bad. (Mostly good though)
Just to add, people seem to forget or aren't around long enough to know that Tasteless got a lot of criticism during broodwar, too.
I dug up this and this thread. The first one is a random live report thread for a day that tasteless actually didn't cast, but while bashing on the horrible SDM + random guy duo, Tasteless came up, too.
On July 26 2009 18:33 Manifesto7 wrote: @ integral: It isn't too critical. I think it is embarrassing that Tasteless seems to not know what goes on in the pro scene. -- Looks like the new guy is good at figuring out colours.
I haven't really noticed or thought about this. Can you give an example of tasteless being clueless etc
He is a nice guy, but what does he tell you in his casts that you don't already know? In addition, what does he not tell you in the casts that you do already know.
I think it is pretty obvious by now that Tasteless, for as much love as he gets for going over there, does not keep up on what is going on in pro starcraft.
Feel free to skim it for fun, people suggesting that Artasteless (yes) would be a great duo ...
The second one is actually a thread about commentators from 2 years ago and it is the same discussion people are having right now.
On October 03 2009 14:11 nebffa wrote: I used to think Tasteless was really good but after watching a lot of GOM with him and SDM I realise they simply talk a lot about non-game related stuff and don't do that much analysis
On October 03 2009 14:20 selboN wrote: If you want to here someone talk a lot, watch Husky. He's entertaining, depends how much depth you want.. He's probably only a C-ish player.
On October 03 2009 14:25 251 wrote: Day[9] is the best. If he made commentary vods, I wouldn't watch anything else
On October 03 2009 14:13 GTR wrote: Day[9], Artosis, Chill.
This. If you're looking for dry, very analytical, in-depth game knowledge, Chill is spectacular.
On October 03 2009 14:46 RoieTRS wrote: Tasteless and sdm have become, what seems like to me, the equivalent of a fighting game commentator that really doesn't talk about the game, and more on other stuff unless they see a big moment.
On October 03 2009 14:54 Whiplash wrote: I'd rather listen to Tasteless/SDM over any other commentator any day they are by far the most entertaining.
Nothing changed, except maybe that day9's approval rate as the strategic mastermind dropped from 100% to 95%.
I'm not gonna read any of the other comments since I'm pretty sure I know whats bound to be in there but after reading the OP I gotta admit I totally agree and of course people are bound to take what they say as truth because of there popularity but regardless your right about the biases they have (and most have) and that's something they should work on. I think Dan will improve over time but don't think the same of Nick, although I do think Nick's a funny guy which makes up for his lack of knowledge. Just my two cents and either way I still like them as a casting duo but I haven't taken there words as pure truth before either, very entertaining nonetheless.
On August 24 2011 03:34 iCCup.Diamond wrote: Just fyi, Artosis watches the Korean Weeklies, he's one of our longest running fans....
Of all the major misconceptions in Starcraft this one is the worst in my opinion:
Conception: Casting is easy, quick, and keeping up on every metagame shift ever is also easy
Reality: Casting is hard as hell, consumes a TON of time, and keeping up on even one region's metagame shifts is borderline impossible in today's current scene.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Tasteless, and saying he is "lost his passion" or whatever is insane. You know why he knew more about BW then SC2? He played the game for 12 years and there was only one region (which has very limited amount of games) you had to keep track of. Starcraft has only been out a bit over a year, the game has changed about 100 times (between patches and style shifts), and there is 5-6 major regions you have to pay attention to with all different style.
Edit: Also for the Artosis is biased thing, watch a UFC broadcast. Joe Rogan is the worst offender pretty much ever of this, and the UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. It apparently is not a huge issue, and much like you ONLY the hardcore hardcore MMA (in your case SC) fans complain about it, no one else gives a shit.
for those of us who don't cast regularly, perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that takes so much time? the stuff i can think of only applies to independent casters (like encoding, setting up equipment et cetera) whereas tastetosis has the whole GSL production crew.
also, they don't need to know or care about EU/NA metagame, since their primary job is clearly to cast the GSL. furthermore, the 1/1/1 is a pretty prevalent TvP issue that is constantly being debated about in korea (apparently even on sc2 talk shows), so them not knowing what the proper counters are is pretty silly.
On August 24 2011 03:34 iCCup.Diamond wrote: Just fyi, Artosis watches the Korean Weeklies, he's one of our longest running fans....
Of all the major misconceptions in Starcraft this one is the worst in my opinion:
Conception: Casting is easy, quick, and keeping up on every metagame shift ever is also easy
Reality: Casting is hard as hell, consumes a TON of time, and keeping up on even one region's metagame shifts is borderline impossible in today's current scene.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Tasteless, and saying he is "lost his passion" or whatever is insane. You know why he knew more about BW then SC2? He played the game for 12 years and there was only one region (which has very limited amount of games) you had to keep track of. Starcraft has only been out a bit over a year, the game has changed about 100 times (between patches and style shifts), and there is 5-6 major regions you have to pay attention to with all different style.
Edit: Also for the Artosis is biased thing, watch a UFC broadcast. Joe Rogan is the worst offender pretty much ever of this, and the UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. It apparently is not a huge issue, and much like you ONLY the hardcore hardcore MMA (in your case SC) fans complain about it, no one else gives a shit.
for those of us who don't cast regularly, perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that takes so much time? the stuff i can think of only applies to independent casters (like encoding, setting up equipment et cetera) whereas tastetosis has the whole GSL production crew.
also, they don't need to know or care about EU/NA metagame, since their primary job is clearly to cast the GSL. furthermore, the 1/1/1 is a pretty prevalent TvP issue that is constantly being debated about in korea (apparently even on sc2 talk shows), so them not knowing what the proper counters are is pretty silly.
You don't just roll out of bed and cast GSL. There's like 100 things a day you have to do (hair, makeup, etc). The reason you never know this is because it's behind the scenes. The scale of a GSL cast is up there with normal tv productions. Just because they aren't encoding video does not mean they prance in and go.
How can you say it's silly not to know the counters when the debate is if there is any counters?
Tasteless' role is similar to DJWheat's.' It's funny because when Nick did his first cast... it was with DJWheat at WCG. Bit of a role reversal when you add Artosis into the mix. I guess they figure someone has to do it.
Honestly, it isn't that hard to be unbiased, but viewers might find it boring. Part of your job as a sportscaster and play-by-play announcer is to sell whatever it is you are selling. Rogan does it pretty well. That's not to say you won't hear people talking shit about him all the time because they do.
All about the hype. In reality, you don't have to rant about how you are the biggest fan of such and such. Base it off stats.
On August 24 2011 03:34 iCCup.Diamond wrote: Just fyi, Artosis watches the Korean Weeklies, he's one of our longest running fans....
Of all the major misconceptions in Starcraft this one is the worst in my opinion:
Conception: Casting is easy, quick, and keeping up on every metagame shift ever is also easy
Reality: Casting is hard as hell, consumes a TON of time, and keeping up on even one region's metagame shifts is borderline impossible in today's current scene.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Tasteless, and saying he is "lost his passion" or whatever is insane. You know why he knew more about BW then SC2? He played the game for 12 years and there was only one region (which has very limited amount of games) you had to keep track of. Starcraft has only been out a bit over a year, the game has changed about 100 times (between patches and style shifts), and there is 5-6 major regions you have to pay attention to with all different style.
Edit: Also for the Artosis is biased thing, watch a UFC broadcast. Joe Rogan is the worst offender pretty much ever of this, and the UFC is the fastest growing sport in the world. It apparently is not a huge issue, and much like you ONLY the hardcore hardcore MMA (in your case SC) fans complain about it, no one else gives a shit.
for those of us who don't cast regularly, perhaps you could explain exactly what it is that takes so much time? the stuff i can think of only applies to independent casters (like encoding, setting up equipment et cetera) whereas tastetosis has the whole GSL production crew.
also, they don't need to know or care about EU/NA metagame, since their primary job is clearly to cast the GSL. furthermore, the 1/1/1 is a pretty prevalent TvP issue that is constantly being debated about in korea (apparently even on sc2 talk shows), so them not knowing what the proper counters are is pretty silly.
You don't just roll out of bed and cast GSL. There's like 100 things a day you have to do (hair, makeup, etc). The reason you never know this is because it's behind the scenes. The scale of a GSL cast is up there with normal tv productions. Just because they aren't encoding video does not mean they prance in and go.
How can you say it's silly not to know the counters when the debate is if there is any counters?
hair makeup etc is exactly what i'm referring to when i say tastetosis has the GSL production crew to take care of things. i find it difficult to believe that spending 6 hours in the makeup room is what prevents them from recognizing the players in the tournament they're supposed to cast. presumably they still have use of their eyes and brain and can study or read up, or even have an intern show them flash cards or read out loud to them.
i'd say it's silly that artosis pushes a build as a counter that has been proven by better players than he as unviable.
I agree with the OP's points, however I feel like Tastosis are better than most other casters, and their casting, while not perfect, is more consistently tolerable than most other english casters today.
I don't find other casting combinations that fun to listen to really. Its weird. To not fall asleep, I need to hear some casting, but often I am not entertained by the casting at all. Tastosis are my favourite followed by Bitterdam then DayJwheat. I love DayJwheat because they can make things sound exciting without being completely wrong about everything (IGN commentators). Day 9 has the fundamentals required of any caster and would be even better if his analysis were slightly more in depth. He is also an excellent observer which is something other casters are pretty bad at.
I love Bitterdam because of the honesty about everything. Their analysis is very good as well and they have lovely voices. I especially love Bitter's 'I have no idea what's going on' because it tells me that something which is not immediately obvious is happening. I hate hearing 'and the Terran is going to poke with the marines, just to see what's going on. Oh he stims and wins. gg guess Protoss is too greedy.'
I love Tastosis the most because they still give the best analysis bar none, have best chemistry, and make the cast super enjoyable to listen to. I am willing to listen to slightly underwhelming games such as Keen vs Coca BECAUSE Tastosis are casting it. Artosis still has the best knowledge of all the casters because his analysis is the most ballzy. What I mean by this is that with Artosis, he isn't going to say 'he is getting the reactor on his barracks so he can switch it with the factory to make hellions,' he is going to be much more insightful, and comment on how it will work against his opponent's build. As for Tasteless, he was the person that introduced me to Starcraft pro gaming so I may be biased, but he is my favourite caster for Starcraft in general. His jokes are really funny and I'm sure he is a very skilled player himself.
Everyone is saying how it doesn't seem like he plays at all and all that, but if Kellymilkies is to be believed, Tasteless is masters on Korea. I just think his casting style has changed so much ever since he started dual casting instead of solo casting. You could tell with SuperDanielMan and Lilsusie that he was lowering the amount of analysis he was doing compared to his first season and that was in BW, where you certainly had no case at all to deny his knowledge.
The more time you spend on screen the greater the odds that you'll eventually screw up, so I can accept that it happens from time to time. Actually, I also enjoy casting by less knowledgeable casters too, so I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that I'm lenient with Artosis on this. And with the amount of time they spend casting, it's not surprising Tasteless talks a lot about unrelated stuff. I can't say I enjoy it, but I have no idea how they can actually still have anything to talk about. I certainly couldn't do it.
Really, the only real problem I've noticed with Tastosis is that they seem to be developing a hostility with the fans. Actually, I haven't noticed that in the most recent casts, but not long ago I felt that a game couldn't pass by without them mocking the fans for being wrong, or having different opinions than them, or worse, for being right while one of them made an error. And every time Tasteless would use that whiny voice and say "No Tasteless, [something that's obviously wrong]" or "Tastosis made a mistake! How dare you not be a perfect human being!".
If I never hear that shrill "satirical" voice again, I'm more than happy with Tastosis' casts.
To be fair tasteless had very little idea about high level bw as well which annoyed the hell out of me. Artosis to the contrary was a solid player himself who knew most ins and outs. Artosis was and is by far the best caster out there simply because he is intelligent, humorous,ironic and easy to listen to. Not one other caster meets this criteria.
I rather have him cast by himself like he used to do because every time he isnt talking the quality of the product drops.
Advice to OP - find something worthy to nitpick on, if all you got is Artosis bias - you dont get the concept. Artosis is sick homer and him being biased is a part of his charm.
On August 13 2011 01:30 OneOther wrote: Usually not a fan of these threads, but your points are actually valid for the most part. People assume such defensive positions against criticisms on Tasteless and Artosis, it's not very productive at all. The OP's suggestions could help improve the commentators, and each point had sound reasoning and evidence.
I have been a fan of Artosis' casting for a long time, especially back in the Brood War days. Despite some first-hand experiences of his bad manner online, I have always respected his casting. For me, Artosis' bias does not bother me as much as Tasteless' simple incapability. I view Tasteless as the main problem, not Artosis. I don't find Tasteless' jokes funny, his analysis are often so wrong, his exaggerations are tiresome, and his understanding of the game is simply lacking. I have always felt this way about him since Brood War. I like him as a person, especially for his hard work for the community, but I honestly have no idea why he is regarded so high in terms of commentating. He has never been good.
Artosis often has to agree with Tasteless' dumb analysis because he doesn't want to make him look stupid. This hampers their commentating as a duo.
EDIT: In my opinion, Chill is the best commentator around. He has the ideal balance of analysis, humor and other intangibles. (His jokes are actually funny/witty, unlike Tasteless and Artosis making critter jokes - hated listening to those 'tasteless' lines for a long time now) Guys like Chill and Day9 can't even be compared to Tasteless, and I hope there will be more commentators like them in the future for our community.
I'm happy to see someone else make the point I am about to.
Tasteless is the problem. Every time a Kpop girl appears on screen he makes some dumb joke about how he wants to marry her and even after the joke has died he continues on with "i actually decide who i want to spend the rest of my life with by looking at 3 second clips at the start of starcraft 2 games". This is just one example of many a lame jokes, and while this issue is certainly subjective, I am not the only one to feel that way, yearning for more professionalism in his casting.
He constantly mis-analyzes situations and it's actually amazing how Artosis can time and time again come up with phrases that don't let Tasteless look like the fool he is in that moment.
It's actually come to a point where they almost NEVER disagree with eachother and do their best to find a way to make every one but the most obvious of blunders seem intentional. Now is leaving these mistakes unrectified good or bad? I don't think every single mistake should be corrected, because that'd take up the majority of casting time, but I do wish that in response to Tasteless' "Oh my god, Player X is completely falling apart", Artosis would - in case Tasteless is actually wrong - more often say "Well I think that he's actually ahead at the moment" instead of "Yeah those blue flame hellions certainly killed quite a few units" and then trying to mix in more unrelated correct analyses to elevate the level of the cast.
Tasteless obviously doesn't have his heart in Starcraft 2 like he did in BW. The only analogies we ever hear out of him are in relation to BroodWar. When asked what he does in his spare-time it comes down to playing video games that aren't SC2 and going out partying and then "some voice acting stuff" almost as an afterthought.
When Tasteless says "I'm gonna go home and play with THIS build", do you really believe him? Artosis constantly talks about watching VODs and how he's trying to figure out the current meta-game in Korea. The only thing we really hear from Tasteless in this regard is that he likes to do the Tasteless build on this map. Oh and he likes Cloak Banshee openers in TvT.
I don't want to say Tasteless needs to stop casting, because he's obviously very experienced at what he does but I think that
1) The stupid jokes need to stop Can you even imagine a professional sports caster from another sport talking about going on a date with Kerrigan? 2) The repeating of Artosis needs to stop try and listen for that, in every cast there's at least 5 occasions of Tasteless repeating Artosis' exact words with a slightly exaggerated inflection just seconds after 3) He needs to put more work into SC2 the Korean casters are all highly ranked Masters players and put their heart and soul into casting SC2, whereas for Tasteless it seems more like a nice hobby that he does on the side.
I would'nt have such a big problem with his casting if he were actually mature about reacting to criticism. But instead we just hear the sarcastic "All the angry forum nerds are saying "Tasteless has lost his passion" and "You're ruining Esports" hahahahaha".
Also: Who do Tastosis think they are, cricizing a coach's decision who to send out in GSTL, when they don't even fucking recognize so many Korean players before the producers blend in their name? It's actually kind of sad when I recognize many more players than Tastosis in a single GSTL match, even though I'm a college student, for whom SC2 is just a hobby. And it's not even an issue for them, they say "Well ... we don't actually know all of the korean pros by face".
Well, you should. It's your job.
+1 to this. This very accurately describes what I feel about tasteless. The only reason I watch GSL (with a paid ticket) is mainly cos of artosis, wolf is pretty good and khaldor is learning fast. Tasteless just seems like he doesnt wanna be there. He is neither enthusiastic or has game knowledge cos he doesnt stream or ladder at all. This is his JOB btw, his dreamjob (so he says). His jokes are not that great tbh, and I tbh I would rather artosis casted with Wolf. It's time for the tasteless era to end, things change, it's ok. Artosis stays, and tasteless goes on to BW or wahtever he feels passionate for. But I want better casting.....from YOU tasteless. Thanks
Everyone who posts in this thread has good reasons for their subjective impressions; and on many points about strategy and analysis and so on I'm sure you're right (I'm not that clever sc-wise tbh).
On the other hand, a lot of things which grate with some people the general audience really enjoy (critter banter, obscure nerd/cult references, joke fails etc). They make a good entertainment product. In addition to which, they (as you would hope) really do put effort into assessing and improving their "act", including listening to and considering posts like the ones in this thread.
Casting is a tricky business, as you have to pitch to many audiences. I don't think any pair however skilled can cover the gamut. Instead, they pick a segment of the spectrum, and play to their strengths, trying to address that part of the market.
It's not that some of the points above aren't valid or salient - but I think for some people it just ultimately comes down to the fact that Tasteosis have made some choices about the way they will approach their casting which some of their audience will just never agree with.
On April 20 2012 21:44 chocopan wrote: Everyone who posts in this thread has good reasons for their subjective impressions; and on many points about strategy and analysis and so on I'm sure you're right (I'm not that clever sc-wise tbh).
On the other hand, a lot of things which grate with some people the general audience really enjoy (critter banter, obscure nerd/cult references, joke fails etc). They make a good entertainment product. In addition to which, they (as you would hope) really do put effort into assessing and improving their "act", including listening to and considering posts like the ones in this thread.
Casting is a tricky business, as you have to pitch to many audiences. I don't think any pair however skilled can cover the gamut. Instead, they pick a segment of the spectrum, and play to their strengths, trying to address that part of the market.
It's not that some of the points above aren't valid or salient - but I think for some people it just ultimately comes down to the fact that Tasteosis have made some choices about the way they will approach their casting which some of their audience will just never agree with.
You sir, should be a diplomat <3 I can't really disagree with you on any of the points!
EPT
![[image loading]](http://operatorchan.org/cp/src/cp8061_mind%20blown.jpg)
