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I don't mind the all kill format for leagues - however, I think it should be used sparingly (I.E. proleague uses it only once in awhile and not every season afaik?). It is undeniable that the all-kill format is more exciting for spectators, the potential for an unsung hero to come and all-kill the other team, or for a reverse all-kill presents edge-of-your-seat excitement that other league formats can't do in the same way. BUT that being said, this is best served sparingly. There is a problem with over-saturation and this format is particularly susceptible to it, in my opinion. Consider TaeJa's run in IPL TAC3. While his streak was remarkable, I think many viewers grew tired of watching Team TaeJa win every week, and it almost detracted from the accomplishment that he strung together. These potentially life altering moments (all kills, reverse all kills, etc) are a lot cooler if they only happen once every few months, or as a special annual event, as opposed to it being something that can be witnessed on an almost daily basis for 2-3 months.
The next issue, more readily addressing Kennigit's point is of player conditions. I agree that the all-kill format is absolutely not ideal for an online setting. More so than anything, forcing an entire team to be online for 4-5 hour blocks when you're dealing with an international community is rough. Ultimately though, coming from a league's perspective, you have to ask yourself what your preference is.
Do your viewers notice or care, for example, that players aren't playing at 100% optimal capacity? Unfortunately, they don't. While we as behind the scenes guys (team managers, pro players, etc) realize that "HerO and TaeJa might have played this match at 50% capacity due to fatigue, etc" and the game wasn't as high a level it could have been if all players involved were playing in deal circumstances, the viewers don't know enough about the game to be able to differentiate between HerO playing at 50% or 100% capacity. For the average viewer, HerO is a god, as is TaeJa, and most other pro players. Sure it is common practice to ridicule and flame players for having bad games, but the reality is at the level Kennigit is referring to, viewers really can't tell the difference.
That may mean that the league is not as competitive as it could be if all the players are playing at full capacity, but then again, viewers can't tell the difference. Why should an online tournament then, care? Again unfortunately, the goal of organizations (i.e. businesses) is to try to put out the best product possible and make money. If it is easier and more cost efficient to run an event in which players often are forced to play at inconvenient times, and it isn't detracting from viewership (the way events like IPL/NASL want to make money), then what incentive do these organizations have to introduce a system that puts better conditions on players.
From the perspective of a team manager (which I am), it sucks. From the perspective of a league organizer (which I also am), it's just unfortunate.
I do agree that the more standard EGMC format is better. It allows more flexibility for scheduling. But the exciting storylines that an all-kill format can bring about aren't as readily apparent. Especially when you have this format, and replay casting, games are often not necessarily played in order, which defeats a lot of the potential thrill. You could have an awesome situation in which a team starts off 0-2, then wins the next 2 matches to force an ace. Knowing that all the games were played from replays however, really kills that excitement because part of the thrill of watching the all-kill format is that everything unfolds live (in the sense that games ARE played in order every time), so when you're in a 4-4 situation going into the final game, you know that both players know their lives are on the line. You will get a better result regardless of the playing conditions than an EGMC format in which Set 4 might be played before Set 1, and the players in Set 4 may not even know the scores of other games until later. What if Set 4 ends up being a critical set in which a team lost Set 1 and 2, then wins Set 3, and the Set 4 player is under a lot of pressure to win the match to send it to ace. Because games are played out of order, that level of excitement just isn't present. While viewers don't necessarily know that games are played out of order, there is an undeniable feeling that isn't there even in this situation because of the possibility that the games were played out of order.
For example, I know sometimes, teams even play the ace match regardless, even if the score ends up 3-0 or 3-1, just due to scheduling. In that case, the ace match loses all its excitement because it was played as just another game, so to speak.
*edit: the real thing would be... can anyone make the case that a system in which players playing at fully optimal capacity would lead to a significant increase in viewership? I don't think so, because viewers can't tell the difference. For example, a very small portion of people are good enough at basketball/have played the game competitively enough to really understand why NBA players are so godly. They watch the game and are entertained by things and say "wow these guys are good." Aside from "Kobe is a god," they don't really understand how he's so good. I mean he's not significantly more athletic/physically gifted than most other players, but he's better because he does a million small things that 90% of the audience can't even realize. They still watch just the same. And it's not as if MORE people would watch if they understood what he did.
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I believe that the problem in the LR thread was (I only just read up on it, since I wanted to know what the responses were to Stephano winning) that you seemed to make your post just after TL's win, and that it only seemed like an excuse for the loss.
Now, I do not know you, but I do not believe you'd post something that so obviously provoked the response it did, if you were "sour" over the loss. But I do think that you got your point through in a manner that made it seem as though Taeja/Hero would have won had the games been playing earlier in the day.
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All the Korean teams deal with this. Its just a matter of if you really want to play in the event or not.
You are still at an advantage of Korean teams having the majority of your players being 'foreigners'.
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Dr. Pepper is the nectar of the gods. How dare you discourage anyone from drinking it.
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We travel a lot, we play jetlagged, short on sleep, in the middle of the night, we win and we lose. Throughout the years we have had hundreds of matches with disadvantageous conditions. I really believe that as long as the conditions are predictable you accept them by joining the league, and shouldn't make an issue out of it when you lose.
Being tired is so common for players it should not be brought up when losing. Every team could pretty much be talking about jetlag, being tired, and scheduling issues after every match they lose. We shouldn't want that kind of scene. I have always found it extremely important that we keep those excuses from the fans who try to enjoy the matches. Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
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I don't think anyone holds Kennigit's comments against him or the team as long as they understand it as a reason but not an excuse. Although I do think the secondary comment on tournament format could have waited until another time, especially considering TL's recent IPTL run.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
On September 12 2012 17:04 Jerubaal wrote:
I don't think anyone holds Kennigit's comments against him or the team as long as they understand it as a reason but not an excuse. Although I do think the secondary comment on tournament format could have waited until another time, especially considering TL's recent IPTL run.
irony's a beautiful thing ^_^
hopefully does understand it and doesn't just blindly complain about this.
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On September 12 2012 16:58 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
I think Kennigit's made it very clear that in this instance he's talking from the position of a fan/spectator and not from the team, and I don't think there's any problem with that at all. It's often really useful to hear these 'insider views' even if they're speaking for themselves and not a team/organisation, because issues like the potential for scheduling/timing concerns are things which people wonder about but can't really answer for themselves. It raises the content of the discussion to have people who actually know what they are talking about bringing that sort of thing up. Even if the timing was a little problematic, having the discussion associated with a current event makes it more meaningful, and I am not really convinced that any apology is necessary for that.
As for the topic itself, I agree with the people who would like to see more teamleagues with a different format. Winner-stays is fun, and as people have said the all-kill storylines are exciting, but I feel like it does skew the excitement a lot in favour of one player, which might not be the case in other formats. For example, it was fantastic to see Sheth take his victories last night - but the way that the format works means that they probably won't be much talked about. At the end of the matches, people are mostly led to focus on the 'winner' who's finished off - in this case Stephano, in the last season of IPL TAC often Taeja. This is great for a while, and it's nice to have these storylines of dominant players triumphing, but maybe not all the time. Sometimes it does feel like we're just watching ace matches between particular individual players, less than a team, which I think a shake-up in format might change, particularly as things like each player's particular role come a lot more into play (as Falling commented - quoted for clarity).
On September 12 2012 13:51 Falling wrote:
I really am not a fan of the all-kill format. I like the head games of when coaches are trying to decide who to send out against who. It seems to me, the different roles in a team come much more into play. Specialist players to knock out x player or race, Ace player to bring the team home, etc.
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All-kill format is stupid anyway, makes no sense that like 90% of SC2 team events are played in that. The most 'exciting' part of it, according to its supporters, is watching one guy win multiple games - but you can already do that watching an MLG or whatever, and seeing one person get 4-5 kills says nothing of their team whatsoever. No offense to TeamLiquid, but seeing 'their great run' last IPTL was fucking ridiculous, lol. It's really stupid that a team is talked about as an amazing team that can contest the strongest teams out there based off one player's performances. (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying TL is a bad team or anything, it's just retarded that people use their IPTL run as a metric of the team's strength when it was literally one player getting them to the finals. It's like worse than Oz in WL PL)
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I want to thank Kennigit for the great insights about the player's and team's problems with an online all-kill format like this. In future I will think more about the player's condition when watching IPTL and I would've never thought about it before without your statement.
With that being sad, I still love the all-kill format and it's the most exciting to watch imo. The problems with scheduling are equal for every team and I think it just adds to the managing/preperation skill that is required. I'm sure many players had to wake and then stay up in the middle of the night to play, but imo that's part of being a progamer and if a player or team decides to play in a league they should be willing to deal with this problem. It can even make for a more an exciting story if the conditions aren't perfect and they certainly aren't always in other sports (bad weather or injuries etc...). So as a viewer I hope we can still enjoy the formant in the future and the teams stay willing to deal with the difficulties.
Just my 2 cents, thanks for allowing this discussion in your blog! <3
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To the people bringing up Proleague and it's success with a format different to all-kill:
First off you need to remember that the Kespa teams live together in dedicated team houses with very strict training regimens. They benefit from many practice partners as well as coaches who help them train and prepare extensively for specific match-ups or maps. Furthermore, the reason they were able to devote so much hard work into preparations for a single match-up was because, unlike StarCraft 2, there wasn't an overabundance of high profile tournaments.
You had Starleague, MSL, Proleague and for a while there was the GOM Classic as well. And then, there was almost no travel. Only a very few of the top koreans would have to travel, and that was for the yearly WCG finals or the occassional BlizzCon Invitational. They weren't on a plane every couple of weeks. Said overabundance of tournaments I feel has begun to hinder the scene a bit.
Personally I find the all-kill format quite exciting. It's pretty telling of who is really good at the moment regardless of individual tournament results. (DongRaeGu and MMA before they started tearing everything up, TaeJa back in early 2011, Creator and MarineKing in the KSL etc) It makes for some really good stories too, I'm sure nobody has forgotten qxc's win over IM. But as many have pointed out in this thread, the all-kill format is quite tedious for online play, especially if your team is spread over multiple continents. Now I would argue that if IPTL used the proleague format, it would not be as popular (how big the difference would be, I am not in a position to speculate about) since we already have a team league that will deliver those cool stories, one arguably more prestigious. (the GSTL, of course)
I think that IPTL and similar leagues more or less need this exciting format in order to be a bit more successful, especially since it has already produced the story of "team TaeJa". And that was really exciting, not only to see Team Liquid be within an inch of winning the whole thing, but also because of how fucking good that kid is at the game. So I imagine many spectators would be disappointed to not be able to experience that once more.
Oh, that brings me to my next point. When there is such an insane amount of high level tournaments to compete in, the players aren't the only ones who suffer, what with not being able to practice as hard as they would like, as well as travel/health issues that may arise. As some have mentioned earlier in this blog, sometimes it gets really tiresome as a spectator to keep track of everything that's happening, especially if you have to devote a lot of time to work or school or something along those lines. As a hardcore fan, for me that's not a problem, but I imagine for many it is the reason they have stopped following the proscene, because if you miss out on a few tournaments you come back to realize that "Hey, suddenly the top 5 in the world are some guys you never heard of previosuly and can't identify with; you're going to have to watch a lot more if you want to be in the know"
I don't know what Team Liquid as a team thinks of these online team leagues and how much importance you put on a single match, especially considering that it was against your archrivals Evil Geniuses. But personally, I as a fan put more value on the fact that your two players 4-1 through their Code S groups to move forward than I would on beating EG (not to take away anything from EG as a team or undermine Stephano's victory as an ace). Though I can imagine how frustrating it is to know that you didn't at least get to show your best performance.
Anyhow, I hope this is not an incoherent ramble, I just wanted to add my 2 cents. ^_^
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On September 12 2012 16:58 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
We travel a lot, we play jetlagged, short on sleep, in the middle of the night, we win and we lose. Throughout the years we have had hundreds of matches with disadvantageous conditions. I really believe that as long as the conditions are predictable you accept them by joining the league, and shouldn't make an issue out of it when you lose.
Being tired is so common for players it should not be brought up when losing. Every team could pretty much be talking about jetlag, being tired, and scheduling issues after every match they lose. We shouldn't want that kind of scene. I have always found it extremely important that we keep those excuses from the fans who try to enjoy the matches. Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
I completely agree with that statement, if the conditions are bad fix them behind the curtain. Speaking about it in public just devalues the show. I as a spectator should not worry about those matters and i shouldnt been able to put a blame on conditions before player performance in a match. There is nothing more annoying than seeing, "player X just came back from MLG yesterday, so when he loses its np he was jetlagged"
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For online leagues, EG'S MCSL is better I feel. I still like IPL's team stuff though!
Stephano had to win that after the Geniuses Falling video.
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Agree 100% with Nazgul. If you don't like the format, do not sign up.
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I like ign's bo9 all kill format. It's exciting to watch. Because it is fun to spectulate who is coming out. Or if a player can all kill a team. EGMCS format is cool but its a lot of games but you only need 4 players potentially 5 for it. So if you choose what 4 you want to play in that you can rest them better them. This is just in theory, idk if it would actually work.
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On September 12 2012 22:41 HeeroFX wrote:
I like ign's bo9 all kill format. It's exciting to watch. Because it is fun to spectulate who is coming out. Or if a player can all kill a team. EGMCS format is cool but its a lot of games but you only need 4 players potentially 5 for it. So if you choose what 4 you want to play in that you can rest them better them. This is just in theory, idk if it would actually work.
But, in an all-kill format you only need max 5 players too for a bo9. And you don't have to announce who will play on what map in advance either; the reason EG do it in their league is to build up hype over potentially big matches / have fans of specific players know in advance if and when they play.
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On September 12 2012 12:19 T.O.P. wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2012 12:16 Adebisi wrote:
I'd prefer 4xBO1, the 4 hour long broadcasts from multiple leagues every night is just exhausting. Yeah. You have to be not in education, employment, or training to follow SC2 leagues. I know a lot of people in rl that stopped watching SC2.
This. Whenever I see somebody complaining about OSL's Bo1 round robin format, I picture an unemployed person or straight F student.
I think SC2 should start moving away from these marathon sessions. The scene can't limit itself to people who have no responsibilities or drive in life. I have to admit, I've barely watched anything the past year or so. I just check the results and maybe watch a VOD once a month or so.
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On September 12 2012 16:58 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
We travel a lot, we play jetlagged, short on sleep, in the middle of the night, we win and we lose. Throughout the years we have had hundreds of matches with disadvantageous conditions. I really believe that as long as the conditions are predictable you accept them by joining the league, and shouldn't make an issue out of it when you lose.
Being tired is so common for players it should not be brought up when losing. Every team could pretty much be talking about jetlag, being tired, and scheduling issues after every match they lose. We shouldn't want that kind of scene. I have always found it extremely important that we keep those excuses from the fans who try to enjoy the matches. Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
On September 12 2012 16:58 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
We travel a lot, we play jetlagged, short on sleep, in the middle of the night, we win and we lose. Throughout the years we have had hundreds of matches with disadvantageous conditions. I really believe that as long as the conditions are predictable you accept them by joining the league, and shouldn't make an issue out of it when you lose.
Being tired is so common for players it should not be brought up when losing. Every team could pretty much be talking about jetlag, being tired, and scheduling issues after every match they lose. We shouldn't want that kind of scene. I have always found it extremely important that we keep those excuses from the fans who try to enjoy the matches. Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
Fan of both teams here, especially Taeja, Idra, and Puma.
Way to take the high road sir. LOTS of respect gained for you and the team from this statement in addition to the high amount you guys already have from me.
The best players and teams find ways to win even in less than optimal conditions. This isn't just e-sports, just look at Jordan with the flu in the finals. (I guess I thought of this since Xeris was talking about Kobe lol) Taeja seemed to be doing great against JYP, and Stephano just took advantage of his greed.Honestly if Hero was dead tired it mightve been a time for Liquid to use their depth and snipe Steph with Ret.
As for Kennigit, not a big fan of the comments/non-excuses/reasons for the loss right after EG wins or this blog. I'm sure you realize how it at least looks bad even if that wasn't your intention. Hopefully though, its played at more optimal conditions for the Koreans in the future though. That way Puma can win it for EG 5-1 
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On September 12 2012 16:58 Liquid`Nazgul wrote:
We travel a lot, we play jetlagged, short on sleep, in the middle of the night, we win and we lose. Throughout the years we have had hundreds of matches with disadvantageous conditions. I really believe that as long as the conditions are predictable you accept them by joining the league, and shouldn't make an issue out of it when you lose.
Being tired is so common for players it should not be brought up when losing. Every team could pretty much be talking about jetlag, being tired, and scheduling issues after every match they lose. We shouldn't want that kind of scene. I have always found it extremely important that we keep those excuses from the fans who try to enjoy the matches. Kennigit's statements don't reflect how the team feels. I apologize to EG and the fans for what was said.
This is exactly the point I was trying to make to Kennigit's but couldn't really express well. Thank you Nazgul
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EPT
