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right now SC2 is in a state of development similar to vanilla BW, or WC3 RoC. Both of which were obsolete before those two respective games were ever considered remotely competitive in e-sports.
Because of the legacy of starcraft, sc2 blew up (commercially/esport-y/monetarily) faster than the game developed into a fully-developed game. Therefore we see many things that I have noticed mentioned by ex-BW fans about the quality of SC2 games, and pros making mistakes that you could *ABSOLUTELY, WITHOUT EXCEPTION* not get away with. Mistakes that, as the game and scene develops two-fold (skillwise, monetarily its already huge obviously), will make many pros disappear and currently mediocre/underrated/'bad' players good.
I actually think this specific aspect of SC2's development that hasn't had enough time to mature, affects the type of progamer with massive skill but unwilling to play a style that nets wins right now. (not just cheese, but decision-wise). random, absolutely blind timings are being used as the basis of the entire sc2 pro strategy repertoire right now.
I would cite both tyler and haypro, who both happen to be on team liquid, as two of the foreign progamers that IMO this has affected the most (before tyler stopped practicing). I would say ret but hes doing well nowadays.
there are players doing alright that i could see absolutely dominating once blind timings fail like they should. HerO just needs to get more cheese-proof and he could be a dominant P in the scene. I can only see ThorZain getting better as time goes on. If IdrA trains in korea once again, we will see him as a RO8-RO16 regular in Code S (I still don't think he has the champion's mentality, but he'll be up there in Code S for a long time if he stays in korea IMO).
In terms of other foreigners that this maturation of the game could affect positively, I'd add SaSe, Naniwa, Strelok, and Kas to the list.
Players like HongUnPrime, Polt *yeah i said it*, MKP, MC will face the fruitdealer fate IMO. Yes I included MKP (but he may change his style and do alright). They have SUPER SUPER refined and meticulous builds/tactics that work because of lack of information. Recipe for early game lifetime success, and fading away later in a game's lifetime.
Happy (the russian terran ex-wc3 pro, not the korean), while a micro BEAST, who plays good macro games, must realize that you cannot do one fucking build in each matchup (you could in wc3, he does in sc2). if he doesn't realize this soon he will fall off the radar as a 'good, but not winning anything' russian. Which, let me remind you, lots of bw russian pros had the same fate lol.
Once Moon finally gets bored of pillaging the last remnants of WC3 money in the scene and plays SC2 fulltime, he will absolutely CRUSH. He has a tendency to cheese in BoX and throw away an early lead obtained via macro games in set1-2 (lol), but once hes better at the game this will become a powerful weapon/ally, not a detraction. Moon is absolutely talented and Artosis's prediction will come true if he actually plays sc2 fulltime. He is just an all-around player that is 100% unpredictable and 200% creative....able to do absolutely ANY style, he was doing sc1 style shit in wc3 LOL....if you know both games thats retardedly hard to do at a high level. He also played with fucking Broodwar B-teamers WHILE playing wc3 100% randomly in an inhouse for his team WMF and scored 27% winrate with NO consistent bw practice. He wasted shit tons of money to please the fans when he was not even that far ahead (did the equivalent of Dark Archon ->steal worker ->get highest tech units in WC3 vs ToD). moon plays like a champion, he needs the practice and resulting skills now.
Speaking of ToD, he knows how to be a progamer. he has the mindset, he has the humility but also self-confidence, and he carefully studies his opponents and knows a TON about the scene, he even fears NA players with no results and much less skill and prepares SO well, and plays a very safe style that transitions into macro play slowly without dying to cheese. ToD doesn't take risks much but when the game matures he will be up there. He has lived many many years in SK and China and knows so many progamers, he's friends with them and his advantage is his massive knowledge of all pros and their styles, and how to take advantage of that. his lan experience and being a world champion give him all the non-ingame elements a champion needs.
If Moon and Lyn end up on the same team and Moon teaches Lyn to use his brain, while Lyn teaches Moon to try and micro when he needs to, they will both crush.
Other players I can easily see resurging include Anypro and Genius. These guys die to stupid shit and blind timings almost every time i see them play. Genius has a very unique but viable style of play that is good for tournaments, hes very stylistic but his style is macro-oriented, reactive, and generally passive.
Last and least, the entire lineup of ItsGoSu will disappear, except for DDE who leaves the team after getting bored of 50-game practice sessions defending 1 base allins.
 
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I really wish for fruitdealer to come back. I also wish that IdrA will return to his former uberness back when he was in Korea.
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TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins....
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rofl the classic artosis-idra argument of "if only everyone played nr 20, we'd be kings of the world!"
guess what: mindgames and outplanning your opponent will forever remain a part of rts, and were an integral part of bw. if you think "random stupid blind timings" don't exist in bw, just go watch the last few series of fvj a few times lolololol
also, your overrating of foreigners' mechanical prowess and skill level compared to the average code a korean is pretty hilarious as well
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I don't think it is that easy to say who will be successful in the future because often someone will slightly improve one aspect of their play, and this then has knock-on effects that mean that overall he is a much better player. Any number of players with basically good skills that seem to be on the edge could develop into the dominating player of the day.
You are talking about a future in which many more solid strategies exist which then reduces seeming randomness. Day9 talked about playing the same player 50 times and knowing all their strats, and then having to find something extra in order to get a win. To me there are some players like TLO, MC and more who are always innovating and trying new strategies, whilst others seem to play what are currently known to be strong styles. I think that although innovators are more likely to go through bad patches in their play, eventually their unusual non-standard styles are more likely to actually dominate in the future.
Who knows what future expansions will bring to the game, or whether the current e-sport popularity is in fact a bubble. At least for SC2 there is no obvious RTS e-sport challenger which gives it some weight as an investment.
One thing that is for sure is that there will be someone that we have not heard of yet that will come out nowhere and dominate. Currently there are still many ex-BW players who are successful in the scene because of their previous experience, but how long can this last for, especially in the non-korean player base?
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SC2 will never become like that, the game design won't allow it. SC2 will always be a game of poker when compared to BW. I'm not saying its a bad thing, I'm just saying that that's what it will be like.
EDIT: I'm going to phrase this differently
Core competencies required in BW
- Multitasking
- Macro
- Micro
- Tactics
- Strategy
Core competencies required in SC2
- Macro
- Decision Making
- Game Sense
- Meta-gaming
Ironically how Flash plays BW is how the OP sees how people play SC2. He doesn't have the best mechanics, but he always manages to seemingly blindly outplay his opponent.
Because Flash's timing attacks are so powerful, a lot of his games play out like in SC2.
- Blindly opens with a CC first -> Blindly hard-counter timing attack with Valkonic vs Mutaling -> opponent has 0% chance of comeback
- Blindly opens with a build -> Opponent thinks hes doing something -> Flash does something else -> Opponent doesn't make any units and completely dies
- etc
BW is 10 years old, is a game which doesn't suit this kind of play that much, yet the player who is doing this style the one who has had the highest ELO in history. So in that respect, I can hardly see SC2 ever changing in this regard.
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Players that are smart enough to win will always be smart enough to win.
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So basically its just your opinion on the current state of the game, then followed by an unrelated rant about your opinions on your favorite players. Good blog i guess. The way you describe some of their play is pretty narrow minded.
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On September 28 2011 05:38 sluggaslamoo wrote:
SC2 will never become like that, the game design won't allow it. SC2 will always be a game of poker when compared to BW. I'm not saying its a bad thing, I'm just saying that that's what it will be like.
EDIT: I'm going to phrase this differently
Core competencies required in BW
- Multitasking
- Macro
- Micro
- Tactics
- Strategy
Core competencies required in SC2
- Macro
- Decision Making
- Game Sense
- Meta-gaming
Ironically how Flash plays BW is how the OP sees how people play SC2. He doesn't have the best mechanics, but he always manages to seemingly blindly outplay his opponent.
Because Flash's timing attacks are so powerful, a lot of his games play out like in SC2.
- Blindly opens with a CC first -> Blindly hard-counter timing attack with Valkonic vs Mutaling -> opponent has 0% chance of comeback
- Blindly opens with a build -> Opponent thinks hes doing something -> Flash does something else -> Opponent doesn't make any units and completely dies
- etc
BW is 10 years old, is a game which doesn't suit this kind of play that much, yet the player who is doing this style the one who has had the highest ELO in history. So in that respect, I can hardly see SC2 ever changing in this regard.
I completely disagree about your analysis of Flash play. This guy is just the best player ever at split second decision making. Plus your distinctions of core competencies are pretty strange.
As for the OP, I feel he's a bit like Idra, having his opinion on how the game should be played. Embrace the July lover who is in you !
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On September 28 2011 05:39 Kashll wrote:
Players that are smart enough to win will always be smart enough to win.
tell that to Grrr
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On September 28 2011 05:11 pStar wrote:
TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins....
they are also the weaker players in gosu, results-wise, except ostoijy
ostoijy does play an aggressive style in his own words btw. (but it is smart, i wont detract from that)
also note that wbc cannon rushed pretty much every game at MLG.
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On September 28 2011 05:20 Kraznaya wrote:
rofl the classic artosis-idra argument of "if only everyone played nr 20, we'd be kings of the world!"
guess what: mindgames and outplanning your opponent will forever remain a part of rts, and were an integral part of bw. if you think "random stupid blind timings" don't exist in bw, just go watch the last few series of fvj a few times lolololol
also, your overrating of foreigners' mechanical prowess and skill level compared to the average code a korean is pretty hilarious as well
i said nothing bad about mindgames, and using cheese as a tool when you need to. Two of the most important aspects at a tournament setting.
If you think that the random timings used currently in sc2 are the same as the calculated, refined ones used in BW with psychological analysis of your opponent then you can think that, but you'd be wrong most of the time. hongun won a game going zealot sentry collo and camping his base, hoping his opponent wouldnt make 1 viking.
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On September 28 2011 06:05 FinestHour wrote:
So basically its just your opinion on the current state of the game, then followed by an unrelated rant about your opinions on your favorite players. Good blog i guess. The way you describe some of their play is pretty narrow minded.
most decisive opinions are narrow-minded. i dont like to leave everything up in the air, factually that is how you would analyze anything, with ambience. but for an actual, strong opinion, you need to be decisively narrow-minded IMO.
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On September 28 2011 05:11 pStar wrote:
TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins....
Wannabuildcannons. TT
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On September 28 2011 05:11 pStar wrote:
TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins....
The only players on our team that are notable cheesers are NamhciR and Bubbles (plus wbc in PvP lol). I don't think the majority of our team cheeses much at all. Gatored, DDE, ViBE, Ostojiy, myself, Kyhol, STX, HwangSin pretty much entirely play macro games.. or at least 2base.
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On September 28 2011 06:44 eourcs wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2011 05:11 pStar wrote:
TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins.... Wannabuildcannons. TT
Willbuildcannons
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17082 Posts
On September 28 2011 05:38 sluggaslamoo wrote:
Ironically how Flash plays BW is how the OP sees how people play SC2. He doesn't have the best mechanics, but he always manages to seemingly blindly outplay his opponent.
What?
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On September 28 2011 06:55 Pokebunny wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2011 05:11 pStar wrote:
TO be fair, Pokebunny, Kyhol, wbc, and Ostoijy arent particularly noted for their 1 base allins.... The only players on our team that are notable cheesers are NamhciR and Bubbles (plus wbc in PvP lol). I don't think the majority of our team cheeses much at all. Gatored, DDE, ViBE, Ostojiy, myself, Kyhol, STX, HwangSin pretty much entirely play macro games.. or at least 2base.
HwangSin and Gatored. Really Pokebunny? Really?
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Flash doesn't blindly outplay opponents at all really. He's good at mixing up builds in individual leagues but most of the time just plays safe. You don't get to 6 Starleague finals in a row doing things blindly.
In contrast SC2 will never have that kind of consistency or dominance. The GSL is even set up in a way to force consistency because OSL/MSL style qualification would be crazy every time and it would never have any consistency - like the foreign scene.
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On September 28 2011 06:31 nath wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2011 05:39 Kashll wrote:
Players that are smart enough to win will always be smart enough to win. tell that to Grrr
Pretty sure Grrr made a conscious decision to quit starcraft to pursue poker and other endeavours.
Tell that to JulyZerg and Nada
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EPT
