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Ok, another thought came to mind.
Whilst at a friends house, I was telling my friend about my previous blog post [Part 1 here], and he informed be that for some games there are websites where professional LoL players post their guides and advice. This is the website known as LoLPro
The spoiler explains the concept of character building in LoL; if you play LoL or know how it works, skip it :D
+ Show Spoiler +For those of you who don't play League of Legends (and I highly recommend you do, because its awesome), you play as champions and there are items you can buy to improve stats in game. Different items give different stats, of course. And with these many items, you can customize your stats with trillions of different combinations.
And there are more efficient ways of building your character than others. Getting Rabadons before boots is highly inefficient, because you will need the early game movement boost before anything else, save your starting item.
This website offers you these advantageous build orders as you will which have been formulated by professional players who know what they're doing. And these guides are comprehensive, with explanations to every item decision, ability leveling guides and so on.
Why can't Starcraft be like this?
Thanks for reading.
 
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http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/index.php?show_part=34
What you want seems to already exist. In LoL do the items you get ever depend on what you scout your opponent doing? I'd assume at a cetain point in the game they do. Similarly in sc2 even though a guide can encompass many situations, to be a good player you must be able to interpret information on your own at a certain point.
And I really don't see why top players would want to provide their opponents such deep insight into their build orders and decision making process anyway.
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Read my other entry, then you'll see where I'm coming from.
The point isn't that the strategy forums don't exist, but rather they don't have many credible people to offer their information. In an ideal world, there would be professional players giving us their insight into peoples problems, instead of a random gold leaguer who thinks he's got the game worked out.
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Well this has been discussed before, but every time a pro player interacts in a meaningful way with the forums in general someone will feel the need to shit on them. The strategy forum, while better these days, is still full of people who lack the pro perspective but also the willingness to accept that, so it's hard to get something meaningful across. Some still try though, I remember Sheth's guides helping me a lot back in the day, but generally there's just little incentive for them to do so and I'd wager a lot of them just follow the Tasteless approach to community sites these days, which is to just stay the hell away.
Besides that, the non-micro portion of SC2 progress isn't really something that's dependent on item picks, you have build orders but gaining the required mechanics and decision making skills is, I feel personally please for the love of glod don't turn this into one of THOSE discussions, much more of a long term process. This requires coaching which is incidently also where there's money to be made.
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On July 19 2012 18:29 schimmetje wrote:
Well this has been discussed before, but every time a pro player interacts in a meaningful way with the forums in general someone will feel the need to shit on them.
The pro's should expect people to shit on them, some people are jealous of their success and others would rather watch the world burn. Shits gonna happen.
Odds are however that the pros hypothetically adding their own advice would never go back to the thread again. Or that's how I think it would happen.
Coaching is the closest thing the pros do to help the community, but I feel that's only because there's money to be made. I don't want Starcraft to become so commercialized. And a lot of the younger people who play this game (18 years and under) can't pay people online, because of the lack of credit cards available.
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It's largely a waste of time for pros to comment on threads as they usually do not have the patience to explain every little detail to other [less informed] posters. There's also an issue of quality control; there's no way to really "screen people out" from giving bad advice, such as having players with poor game knowledge (but think otherwise) give articulate, logically consistent arguments that in actual application are wrong.
In the most recent Inside The Game (hosted by djWheat) a community member asked about this and the response is basically what I wrote above. The Q&A is towards the end of the broadcast.
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On July 19 2012 19:52 dicedicerevolution wrote:
It's largely a waste of time for pros to comment on threads as they usually do not have the patience to explain every little detail to other [less informed] posters. There's also an issue of quality control; there's no way to really "screen people out" from giving bad advice, such as having players with poor game knowledge (but think otherwise) give articulate, logically consistent arguments that in actual application are wrong.
In the most recent Inside The Game (hosted by djWheat) a community member asked about this and the response is basically what I wrote above. The Q&A is towards the end of the broadcast.
I completely agree with what you've said, and thanks for the link to ITG  I'll check it out
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On July 19 2012 18:40 MrMcIntosh wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2012 18:29 schimmetje wrote:
Well this has been discussed before, but every time a pro player interacts in a meaningful way with the forums in general someone will feel the need to shit on them. The pro's should expect people to shit on them, some people are jealous of their success and others would rather watch the world burn. Shits gonna happen.
Yeah but then shit like what you're asking for is also not going to happen. If the community wants something, the community should shape up.
As for the commercialization, well.. that's what you get when your pro-scene develops. There have been alternatives to one-on-one coaching, can't think of the sites off the top of my head but there's a few where pros show builds and things they use, but these come with memberships too.
On the upside, I guess it allows us to appreciate Liquipedia and the likes more right?
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On July 19 2012 20:24 schimmetje wrote:
Yeah but then shit like what you're asking for is also not going to happen. If the community wants something, the community should shape up.
The point to this blog was to raise the awareness of these problems so the community see's something they want
On July 19 2012 20:24 schimmetje wrote:
On the upside, I guess it allows us to appreciate Liquipedia and the likes more right?
Liquipedia isn't regularly updated. If you check out the build orders they're horribly outdated.
But thanks for your opinion :D
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They actually do post here. It's also mostly meaningless to the majority of starcraft players because they don't possess the necessary skills to capitalize on a professional's advice. Almost every time a pro posts in the strategy forum, ten idiots post disagreeing with it.
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TL (community? website? maybe a bit of both) really screwed the pooch on this one.
Some pros couldn't be asked to 'waste their time' on forums so every normal poster realized that there was very little useful in the strategy forum. Consequently, the only people posting there are people asking dull, generic questions that any joe can answer or the worst trolls who just don't care.
It doesn't matter whether you're running a thread or a senatorial campaign, the way to deal with shit is by drowning the shit with constructive posts, not recoiling at the slightest suggestion of shit.
You think the strategy is shit, pros? It should be; you made it that way.
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On July 19 2012 18:40 MrMcIntosh wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2012 18:29 schimmetje wrote:
Well this has been discussed before, but every time a pro player interacts in a meaningful way with the forums in general someone will feel the need to shit on them. The pro's should expect people to shit on them, some people are jealous of their success and others would rather watch the world burn. Shits gonna happen. Odds are however that the pros hypothetically adding their own advice would never go back to the thread again. Or that's how I think it would happen. Coaching is the closest thing the pros do to help the community, but I feel that's only because there's money to be made. I don't want Starcraft to become so commercialized. And a lot of the younger people who play this game (18 years and under) can't pay people online, because of the lack of credit cards available.
How do you think people learn tennis, football, basketball etc? They get coached or join a team, both of which usually cost money. If you want to be a pro tennis player you have to start at 5 years old and it costs a lot of money. The current model for coaching is precisely what this game needs, people outside of esports need to see that there are sustainable business models and parents need to see that their child getting coaching COULD one day lead to a career in esports.
Its not commercialization, its life. Everything you do costs money. Pro coaches should be paid for their time if only because its a service you simply can't get from anyone else, they are the experts in their field and should be paid accordingly.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
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Why do you feel that pros owe it to the community to post this kind of advice? I understand that they wouldn't be able to make a living without the community, but it goes both ways: the community would be diminished without pro players as well. As I see it, it takes no special skill to be part of the community, but it takes tremendous hard work and talent to reach the level that these pro players have. That disparity makes me think that it's the community that should be doing more to support the pros, and not the other way around.
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EPT
