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Wow great post Tyler and good points, while it's easy to focus on design and balance all the time, I think foreigners should realize that a repeat of Lilbow in 2015 would kind of be the deathcall of this "automatic foreigners at Blizzcon" model. And to be fair, it's likely Hydra and possibly viOLet will earn spots so it won't be 8 foreigners but even 5 foreigners getting abused by Koreans would be a sad end to the year.
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woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post.
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 00:44 SC2FeaR wrote:
woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
I didn't include myself in this post at all? I said "you" progamers. I didn't talk about my personal experience at all. I made some judgments that anyone can evaluate themselves. I don't know what this has to do with me at all. Your suggestion that it does is the most irrelevant thing in this thread so far. So if you value authentic relevance maybe you should give your opinion on whether the non-Korean players could be better, whether thinking of the game as something that can be rewritten is something that's good for a competitive mindset, and whether a non-Korean progamer has a better chance of improving things by performing well or by giving professional game developers suggestions on how to do their job. The ideas don't need a name attached to them and if you've got a problem with my name being attached to them, then maybe your strategy should be to NOT draw attention to it.
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Yeah because the best Koreans don't complain about or suggest changes for the game, right. It's therapeutic to vent about balance and ask for changes and doing so has absolutely no correlation to the work ethic of the player, this is nonsense. I saw Flash ask for 2 supply Tank on Live on Three, lol.
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thx for taking the time to create this blog.
On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good.
grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world.
the only time a foreign pro will have a legit shot at becoming world champ is if he or she does like grrrr did more than a decade ago.
your thoughts?
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What?!?
You mean to tell me that part of being a "pro-gamer" isn't making cry cry balance posts on bnet forums?!?
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world. the only time a foreign pro will have a legit shot at becoming world champ is if he or she does like grrrr did more than a decade ago. your thoughts?
Doesn't seem necessary to me at all. It's such an abstract idea though that I'm not even sure how to respond to it. SC is primarily a game of skills. You increase your win rate by improving those skills. The best players in the world (the best Koreans) perform the skills of the game consistently at a high level, so that it's not often that a game is thrown because anything was done particularly poorly, and they are also pushing the limits on how good a player can get at these skills, so sometimes they give themselves a victory just by being so unexpectedly good at a particular thing.
I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that the way the Koreans play is the only way to get consistently good at these skills and to keep pushing the limits because I don't see any particular reason why that'd be true. Every country has produced amazing results in other disciplines. No reason to abandon the culture you're used to because you think it can't produce results. There are certainly many people doing incredible things across all kinds disciplines and cultures. Also, I'm not convinced that the way Koreans practice esports even is optimal. They are, of course, dominant. They've accomplished amazing things. But I don't think their culture has happened upon the perfect way to be a progamer.
I do think that there are problems in some pockets of non-Korean esports culture. But to make it a national thing is wrong. An American looking to break through to the next level can look to other Americans in other disciplines to see how someone from their own culture becomes a dominant competitor. There's no shortage of inspiration for America nor for most countries. Study what the Koreans do and assimilate it into your own regimen if you think it's valuable... but assimilate yourself to their culture? Extraneous imo.
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on one level being the best basketball player in the world has nothing to do with speaking english and living in the USA.
all the best coaches and players play in United States ( and Toronto ) and speak english with each other. Therefore, if a non-American player hopes to be the best in the world learning to speak english and assimilate with the culture of the best players is necessary.
i think Starcraft is the same way.
is it theoretically possible for the best basketball player in the world to never play in the NCAA and NBA and not speak english? yes, its theoretically possible. it is very unlikely.
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8748 Posts
But there's no teamwork or coaching in SC. You never have to speak a word of any language to become the best SC player in the world. And you've already boiled down your culture assimilation thing to just (1) surround yourself with other talented SC players/analysts and (2) be able to communicate with those people. There's a lot more to culture than that. Certainly the web of relationships between such a group of people will establish some kind of culture itself. But it wouldn't require an individual to adapt Korean culture specifically.
edit: And before you say the Koreans actually have coaches, they really don't. The player is on his own once the game starts. The coaches are more like trainers and managers. They help you train and prepare but once the game starts, there's no coaching going on. They make decisions for team leagues so they kind of play a meta game against the other coaches but that's irrelevant to player skill.
I think that having discussions with players and analysts can be beneficial but not necessary. So many games are played that you only have to watch the games themselves to see a true statement about the game itself rather than listen to words of other players to learn truths about the game.
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On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
During the Legacy of the Void beta, it was understandable for every pro who had not qualified for Blizzcon to become a part-time game designer. Huge decisions were being made about the future of competitive SC2 and Blizzard wanted your help. There weren't a lot of competitions going on so a shift in your priorities was an easy decision.
Immediately following the release of LotV, it was natural for some of those thought processes to linger. Strategies developed quickly and each matchup felt different as each significant discovery was made. Blizzard had stated that they planned to continue to make changes and you wanted to continue to be a partner in the process.
But now we're in the thick of the competitive season. The Winter Championship has been played and the Spring Championship is coming soon. And yet you're still trying to rewrite the rules of the game. Focus on your job. There's no unique suggestion you can make to the SC2 dev team that'll be more valuable to the scene than you playing really well. It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. The game is more fun to watch the better the players are.
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good.
What about doing your own job? I don't think you get paid to write posts that insult progamers on TL. Hence you are not doing your job when making suggesting towards how other should behave. But pro gamers aren't allowed to make suggestions in their own time? They need to play the game 24/7 and never take any breaks to write suggestions?
Sick double standard.
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i'm not boiling it down to 1 thing.
learning how to speak english is a necessary but insufficient condition to becoming the best basketball player in the world.
the 1v1 game is played in isolation. however, getting better at Starcraft is a team effort. same with getting better at basketball.
hitting a baseball is an individual pursuit. you won't become the best hitter in the world if you can not communicate with the best batting coaches and best hitters in the world. and also you must be tested by the best pitching.
any MLB player with 3,000 hits can talk about hitting for hours and hours and will explain that their evolution as a hitter involved input from many excellent coaches. none of the coaches ever step in the batters box and swing at a pitch for them though.
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On March 20 2016 00:44 SC2FeaR wrote:
woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post.
Temp banned for sassing a guy who insulted half the pro scene? I think Nony asked for some counter swings, no?
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if only you applied your own advice for yourself 
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You're acting like criticizing the balance team and putting forth design ideas somehow takes significant time away from practice and therefore, if pros stop talking about balance, they'll get better at the game. That's silly.
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On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world.
AFAIK he didn't really learn to speak korean on a basic level years after he was irrelevant, plus on one of the talkshows he did he was famous for having bad korean.
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Just be like avilo. The guy has been trying to save the game and its spot in the e-sports team for years now. He tries to play his best all the time, constructively analyzes his play, and goes out of his way to also weed out hackers and cheaters. This is all in addition to him providing meaningful and well thought out suggestions to the devs on the official battle.net forums. Our role model and answers are right in front of us guys, we just need to listen to him.
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 06:53 Empirimancer wrote:
You're acting like criticizing the balance team and putting forth design ideas somehow takes significant time away from practice and therefore, if pros stop talking about balance, they'll get better at the game. That's silly.
It has nothing to do with time. How did I act like that? I said "focus" but didn't mention anything about time management. It's a matter of mindset and attitude and focus.
On March 20 2016 06:50 Chubz wrote:if only you applied your own advice for yourself
When I was good at BW, it never crossed my mind for a second that the rules of the game were going to be changed. When WCG or TSL or KeSPA announced the maps that we were gonna play on, we just accepted them and did what we could to maximize our chance to win. And to even think of Blizzard doing a balance patch would have been absurd.
As for SC2, I did try to play both roles to some extent, as a "personality" who commented on things and as a player. I agree with you that this would have been good advice for me. But knowing personally how I was different at the time of my success in BW from how I was at the time of my failures in SC2, I'm sure that this advice would not have been enough to help me. It wasn't the main thing tripping me up. Is it the main thing tripping up some of the top talent right now? I don't think it's exactly it, but it's a symptom of the bad mindset of the scene, which definitely isn't competitive enough and is not right for getting everyone to play the best they can. Maybe staying focused on a problem-solving and winrate-improving mindset will help some players. Maybe having someone like me tell them they suck will spur them on to prove me wrong. Motivation works in weird ways. I'm sure someone wants to go outplay Zest and then bring this up, even though I'm nobody and it doesn't really matter that I doubted them.
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On March 20 2016 06:55 sabas123 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world. AFAIK he didn't really learn to speak korean on a basic level years after he was irrelevant, plus on one of the talkshows he did he was famous for having bad korean.
The pre-2001 foreigner scene is really poorly documented but from what I've read it was as good or better than the Korean scene and grrr was not the only foreigner who could have won an OSL. If he did speak Korean in 2000 there's no record of it.
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It's a bit of a shame that most of this post will be overshadowed by the aggressive "get good" comment, and people arguing against that one line.
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
This quote is so extremely true. Balance can swing back and forth, but the best players (usually) remain the best players through it all. Talent usually makes balance irrelevant. Foreigners doing well at Blizzcon would be huge for viewership.
That being said I don't think it's bad for players to give their thoughts on the state of the game. But at the end of the day, balance isn't the thing holding anyone back from winning, and focusing on balance too much will only hinder performance.
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Italy12246 Posts
The "get good" argument is perfectly fine imo. I feel like a lot of the Starcraft community (pros included) went from "ok this might strategy is really tough, let's figure this shit out" to "we absolutely instantely need to change this it's imbalanced and i know exactly what game design decision wpuld make things better".
I think that attitude is really arrogant, and it's a fairly big reason why i've been much less active; i just don't enjoy the community nearly as much anymore. Compare the attitude in these threads (against strategies that were immensly problematic at the time):
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/320894-pvz-beating-stephano-style-roaches
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/250379-qtips-guide-to-defending-the-1-1-1-pvt
to any discussion that happens now. It's night and day.
It's fine to have your own suggestions and ideas, it's not fine to focus too much on them. Right now i feel most people focus too much on that side of things and too little on actually playing the game.
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Sry nony but first: doing suggestions about the game has nothing to do with them beeing bad. The game needs to improve either way. With or without foreigner winning.
Also I think its kinda insulting since you are not a pro anymore, nor did i see you on one of the tournaments I've watched in the last weeks. So what gives you the right to insult other people that they are not doing there job correctly, that you decided to give up on?
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Italy12246 Posts
On March 20 2016 07:36 Granas1 wrote:
Sry nony but first: doing suggestions about the game has nothing to do with them beeing bad. The game needs to improve either way. With or without foreigner winning.
Also I think its kinda insulting since you are not a pro anymore, nor did i see you on one of the tournaments I've watched in the last weeks. So what gives you the right to insult other people that they are not doing there job correctly, that you decided to give up on?
Nony isn't being insulting at all imo, he's just saying "rather than focusing on suggesting changes to units and maps in a game that isn't close to being understood or figured out, practice first and foremost, and only bring up suggestions later", which i agree with.
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this is your chance to make an aggressive provocative reply to nony and feel important standing up to a colored icon poster and I'm glad my previous posters have taken the opprotunity to grab the attention they crave
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i disagree with the hate/criticism Nony is getting. He's done more than his fair share of practice for the games he's played competitively.
He sees the mentality of blame the design / developer/ tournament of pros in the scene, instead of actual hauling ass and working in spite of inconveniences or perception of imbalance. That's a luxury pros back in the day did not have and its probably why Koreans just suit up and just do their job instead of whining on twitter.
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But there is no need to get good with the new WCS rules, free spots for every foreigner!
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woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post.
Wow getting banned for sharing his opinion, interesting methods here in this forum...
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The problem is that whining or complaining or the general community outlook on the game directly and significantly effects balance change/issues. Also suggestions made by pros/others can/will come into effect. So when pros do spend time doing these things it can actually impact their jobs. I WISH Blizzard had a intelligent and self sufficient balance team that ignored the community like other game developers or that the game was decently balanced and could be balanced purely off of maps made my competitive leagues like in BW.
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Italy12246 Posts
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On March 20 2016 08:17 Pawel95 wrote:
woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post.
Wow getting banned for sharing his opinion, interesting methods here in this forum...
Guy comes to a blog post, says nothing about the topic, makes a 1-line insult to the creator. What a lovely contribution to the forums.
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 07:36 Granas1 wrote:
Sry nony but first: doing suggestions about the game has nothing to do with them beeing bad. The game needs to improve either way. With or without foreigner winning.
Also I think its kinda insulting since you are not a pro anymore, nor did i see you on one of the tournaments I've watched in the last weeks. So what gives you the right to insult other people that they are not doing there job correctly, that you decided to give up on?
Here are the two things I've got going for me:
(1) I understand the game well enough that I can see the major mistakes that cause losses. I can see specifically how well a top Korean player does a thing and then see a top non-Korean player lose a game because he didn't meet the same standard. Everyone can see these kinds of things to some extent but I think I'm pretty good at it. More importantly, I'm good at judging how important things are according to how much they influence winning and losing.
(2) My experience with what kind of attitude a pro player benefits from does not go away just because I'm not playing at that level anymore. It's still valid.
If you disagree with either of those two things, then I guess you could think of my post as having no authority behind it and then you'd have to judge it based on the ideas it presents.
As far as me giving up on SC2 or mostly failing at it, there are a lot of reasons a person won't succeed. I've had my own issues not related to the topics of this blog that held me back. It doesn't mean I don't know a bad competitive mindset when I see one.
With BW, I didn't imagine making a career out of it when I started getting good. And there was no reason to even think about giving my feedback on game design. I also didn't care about "the scene" because we were all really just Korean BW fans, following their scene in our English-speaking community, and some of us happened to be pretty good at the game so we got to enjoy WCG once a year (and TSL at the very end). Those are three big things affecting progamers today that weren't an issue for me. That's all that mattered was getting good at the game. If progamers today did not feel like they had to be custodians of the scene or custodians of the game or worry about making enough money, and that that's all they had to do was get really good, then the scene would be better off and the game would be better off and there'd be more money.
The absolutely overwhelming directive that should be going through every non-Korean's mind this entire year is "We must win some matches at Blizzcon." That is way more important than anything else. And I get the feeling no one even thinks about it. My more specific advice to progamers, other than do your job and get good, is this: Your goal is to beat the best Korean player in the world and that match is taking place in early November. Figure out how you're going to get from where you are now to being favored in that match and start that training right now. In the process, you will qualify, so don't even worry about that. But if so many people get so much better that you don't qualify even though you're playing a lot better, then you've still done a great service to yourself and the scene.
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 08:21 HuK wrote:
The problem is that whining or complaining or the general community outlook on the game directly and significantly effects balance change/issues. Also suggestions made by pros/others can/will come into effect. So when pros do spend time doing these things it can actually impact their jobs. I WISH Blizzard had a intelligent and self sufficient balance team that ignored the community like other game developers or that the game was decently balanced and could be balanced purely off of maps made my competitive leagues like in BW.
I'm replying just to acknowledge this post. I'm commenting back to other random people but for any pro that comments, I'd rather just let their comment stand on its own. I don't want to get into a back-and-forth with everyone. So any pro that wants to say their piece, feel free. I'm not gonna attack it or whatever.
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This is just a simple well worded and not trying to be that rude version of 'stop complaining about the imbalance which you could overcome if you weren't bad' (defeatist attitude), which is true for some people and I can imagine was brought on more by a recent battle.net post (and troll post).
While Nony has a point, I still think pro input on balance is important as they're pro's and I know there's more behind the scenes that goes into it too (as in Blizzard talking with pro's/wasn't there a skype group during beta with players/Blizzard?).
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If you want to attack anything in this thread, attack Nony's claim, not his person. His person has nothing to do with the merits of his argument.
On March 20 2016 08:17 Pawel95 wrote:
woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post.
Wow getting banned for sharing his opinion, interesting methods here in this forum...
Teamliquid mods rule with an ironfist. It is how it has been for the past decade and longer, it is how I wish it to be in the future.
Blizzard is in a tough place. If they don't respond to all this feedback (including community whining), people will see them as inactive and unresponsive. If they do respond, they tempt these kinds of feedback from frustrated players, pros and amateurs alike, on game balance. This type of feedback has its place, but the extent to which it should affect blizzard's balance decision is highly debatable.
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I lived and worked in Korea for 6 years. Koreans aren't genetically gifted or special. I am married to one!
I find they just work a lot harder and train smarter. They are also extremely competitive. It's easy for me to be critical of foreigners but there's really no reason they can't compete with the best if they put in the same amount of hours and properly focused effort as Koreans do. It almost feels like a mental block. Like they know they are at some big disadvantage already...
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The problem with the "get good" attitude is that if the best and most well-known players of two races put their heads down and play hard and don't mention balance, and a few well-known players of the third race constantly complain about balance, you'll eventually see the game's balance swing in favor of the third race since their advocates are most vocal.
Were there strategy threads for zerg players in 2011 that didn't devolve into balance whining?
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Italy12246 Posts
I don't remember any threads as good as the two i linked but to be fair Protoss was always the most active race in the sc2 forum. Also i didn't read Zerg threads at all, i only linked those two because i remember how much they helped my own game.
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ur opinion is wrong dude. its way more fun to watch people like idra than innovation. it might give +20% viewers to watch some korean dude win WCS NA and cant even speak american english but im pretty sure it will give twice the viewers to have a foreigner with soul and some spirit and "maybe" a attitude. u should watch the league of legends scene. they know all about it and they're doing pretty well. koreans are just not good marketing, Zest, innovation, solar, maru dont stream on twitch, they dont make content, they dont feed the casuals with attention or content. something to think about (this is no a rage post. u're welcome to give me your opinion on my post)
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Katowice25012 Posts
On March 20 2016 07:14 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:50 Chubz wrote:if only you applied your own advice for yourself When I was good at BW, it never crossed my mind for a second that the rules of the game were going to be changed. When WCG or TSL or KeSPA announced the maps that we were gonna play on, we just accepted them and did what we could to maximize our chance to win. And to even think of Blizzard doing a balance patch would have been absurd.
This is one of the things I've never really liked about the SC2 community, in the 'good old days of BW' there was this attitude that you just had to learn to deal with it and figure shit out with what maps you had (even if it meant playing TvZ on Battle Royal like Flash once tried) and strategies were constantly evolving to fit things even as late as say 2012 (I think that's when people finalized the evolution of that bio->mech->bio shit on Fighting Spirit TvZ? around there), a decade after the last balance patch. It was fun and neat to see, and maps had a pretty good regular schedule of rotation that kept things fresh.
When I first started playing/watching Dota it blew my mind that there was this attitude like "well if this sucks it doesn't matter because the game will be totally different in 4 months maybe I can do better then". I like the constant patching in that context because it does a good job of keeping that particular game fresh year after year, but it breeds a kind of laziness that sometimes you just do the same thing over and over again even if its not that good because soon enough it won't matter.
All that being said there were more than a few instances of a guy like Bisu or Yellow saying embarrassing things about how maps were unwinnable for their race, even savior liked to complain about how hard he had to fight to win on the maps he was given (though for him there was more truth to what he was saying than most others).
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I am by no means a "pro" player, but I've loved this game since WOL. I've never had any major complaints about balance. But with LOTV that all changed. Overall I think this game right now is garbage and has been since the start of beta. So I can imagine if I WAS a pro player, I would be very hard pressed to care all at about the future of this game. Blizzard has done very little in terms of proving they care about the game or the community (IMO).
I only played 3 days of beta before it closed. I held off because something told me not to waste my time. I always thought it was the bad balance in beta, which was expected... because its beta. I blindly held out hope that with the official release all the major issues and whatnot were going to be fixed. Yet I was disappointed, and continue to be. It is depressing to think a game I once loved so much, I actually hate right now.
I can only speculate if others feel the same way.
Sorry I think I'm rambling.
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If I'm not mistaken, it seems NoNy's saying that foreign pros ought focus more on things within their control, rather than things that aren't. And that the Koreans are playing the same game, but to a better standard - which has nothing to do with balance.
Personally, I applaud him for speaking out against a culture of mediocrity and whining. The situation for foreign pros is the best it's ever been, what a good opportunity to focus on gettin' gud.
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I don't see how you can fault a pro for speaking out. If anyone is able to know the issues in the game, it's them. If you don't attempt to educate people or share your views on it, then is a gold leaguer on the balance team supposed to "get it" by themselves? I wouldn't advise holding your breath, waiting for that. And, to actually be good at something and continue getting better, it helps if you enjoy what you're doing. Being forced to play the same build every game, a style you probably don't even like, isn't going to help you. Why should people have to quit over the swarm host? So many senseless things in this game become unbearable because they last for way longer than they should, because people are far too tolerant.
I think it's irresponsible and stupid if you know what the issues are yet you still won't speak on it, even when it's to your detriment... What's annoying is when a pro gamer will vehemently claim a mu is imbalanced in the other guy's favor, no matter what the numbers are. Or, how about Snute? Abused the worst designed unit in RTS history for years, and then had the gall to complain about the health on assimilators? You can't make that stuff up. That's as distasteful as can be, if it were a joke. To be serious? Incomprehensible. Assimilators...
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Korean players were up in arms over the state of the adept and they were right to do so. They openly advocated for 'changing the rules of the game' and they got it and the game has been better off for it.
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Nony, I'm glad you're addressing some of the negative/troll posts, but please don't get too phased by this. Remember it's just a random forum member hiding behind a computer. This is a wonderful post and an amazing mindset to have as a pro gamer. Well said.
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what is this post OP?
my god
edit: drunk post right ?
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I mostly agree with nony, however it's still fine to post your suggestions and feedback reports about what you think as a progamer about the game you devote your life to. The more reports the better, because it's additional exposure of a certain interaction on GM level and another data point for Blizzard as well. But what's wrong is to think your suggestion or idea or proposal is 100% correct or has to be in game, or will ever be. Blizzard despite making some poor decisions in the past are no fools and most likely have learnt from their mistakes to set their feedback filters as tight as it's possible can be.
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Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so.
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On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so.
read carefully into his post
It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players.
His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player.
Instead: focus on improvement
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner.
He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets.
But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better.
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That guy actually got temp-banned for saying his opinion on the first page. Yikes.
All Hail Tyler
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I don't think Nony's post should be read as applying to all players equally. Obviously each person is going to vary in mentality. One player might have a completely play-to-win attitude, yet still recognize that what he's forced to do to win is a result of bad game design, and therefore he complains a lot.
Some players, on the other hand, do let the bad game design get in their head and demotivate them. Either you accept that the game is garbage and know that you agreed to playing a garbage game going into it, or you get upset and accomplish little.
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France12880 Posts
Thing is Stephano is gone and there won't be another one before SC2 actually becomes a daed game.
Edit:
French already surpass the koreans tho NoNy, didn't you see the Nation Wars? :D.
We are gud already.
But yes NA should become relevant in games that aren't only played by NA players (SSBM, Halo...), get good NA, stay strong.
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On March 20 2016 07:18 jalstar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:55 sabas123 wrote:On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world. AFAIK he didn't really learn to speak korean on a basic level years after he was irrelevant, plus on one of the talkshows he did he was famous for having bad korean. The pre-2001 foreigner scene is really poorly documented but from what I've read it was as good or better than the Korean scene and grrr was not the only foreigner who could have won an OSL. If he did speak Korean in 2000 there's no record of it.
you do not learn to speak a language in 1 year though. patry assimilated into the subculture surrounding the top SC players. the language of the best players is korean and patry learned the language while living there year round.
if SC2 were like European Football and a handful of different countries produced world class players and had world class coaching then you would have many options in your path to becoming the best. you could go to Germany or Brazil or maybe Italy or etc etc. you could speak german or english or italian or portuguese etc etc.
However, currently the top level SC2 scene is like basketball and baseball before 1970 or like women's hockey is today. There is only 1 place to go and 1 language to learn. USA and English.
When a Canadian wants to be the best baseball, basketball or football player in the world where do they travel and live almost all year round... and year after year? to the place where all the best players are.
If any Canadian ever hopes to be amongst the best SC2 players in the world the last thing he or she should do is live here. Starcraft ain't hockey. The results speak for themselves.
Tying this back into the topic. Part of becoming as good as the best includes becoming part of the subculture of the best. That is hard to do when you can't speak the language and do not live in the same country where all the best players are located.
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GRAND OLD AMERICA16375 Posts
Glad I'm not the only one that hold these views
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Imo there should be a balance. I do not think it's wrong for progamers to comment on balance/design when, for example, right now we are seeing games where ravagers are literally being spammed 100% in almost every match-up, or things like mech being completely killed in LOTV.
I mean, i 100% agree with Nony's OP if this were brood war. But it's not...and that's because brood war was almost perfectly balanced. With LOTV...you have stuff like an invulnerable nydus worm in the game...in my opinion when there are things like this that are unhealthy for the gameplay for pros and joes and viewers alike...people need to speak up and get blizzard to get that out of the game or tweak it.
SC2 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay different from Brood War...there are many things in SC2 that are absurdly broken in one way or another that are left alone for months at a time, and no, there will never be "progamer solutions" to those because they are fundamentally broken game mechanics (mass air, invincible nydus, current ravager stats, etc.)
I mean, blizzard basically patches so little already...if anything most of the SC2 community should be asking for more patches. It just boils down to SC2 is a way different game than BW and no where near as balanced.
If we all wanna "let the pros figure it out" then GL having 0% mech games for the entire rest of SC2's lifetime after blizzard already made changes to kill mech.
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28089 Posts
On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement Show nested quote +But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better.
Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog.
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On March 20 2016 13:04 avilo wrote:
Imo there should be a balance. I do not think it's wrong for progamers to comment on balance/design when, for example, right now we are seeing games where ravagers are literally being spammed 100% in almost every match-up, or things like mech being completely killed in LOTV.
I mean, i 100% agree with Nony's OP if this were brood war. But it's not...and that's because brood war was almost perfectly balanced. With LOTV...you have stuff like an invulnerable nydus worm in the game...in my opinion when there are things like this that are unhealthy for the gameplay for pros and joes and viewers alike...people need to speak up and get blizzard to get that out of the game or tweak it.
SC2 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay different from Brood War...there are many things in SC2 that are absurdly broken in one way or another that are left alone for months at a time, and no, there will never be "progamer solutions" to those because they are fundamentally broken game mechanics (mass air, invincible nydus, current ravager stats, etc.)
I mean, blizzard basically patches so little already...if anything most of the SC2 community should be asking for more patches. It just boils down to SC2 is a way different game than BW and no where near as balanced.
If we all wanna "let the pros figure it out" then GL having 0% mech games for the entire rest of SC2's lifetime after blizzard already made changes to kill mech.
Do you realize the time that BW took to balance? Even then Koreans were better. Always will be better. Why? They blame balance too, they're humans too. However, their way of effort, to get the job done, is way different than us foreigners. I'll take you for example, you constantly whine and whine about balance in your stream, yet I do not see you changing your playstyle 1 bit. I always like to use the example: Hey, if (KR Terran Progamer) was in my position, would he lose? Or would he say with 100% that everything that beats us is imba, and it's blizzard fault?
LotV is still fresh (BW and SC2 wise) and we cannot tolerate major changes to a game this fresh. I see ravagers, I see ravagers getting beat down. The game is still evolving, and there are major aspects we're still missing. No one knew in the early days of WoL how imba BL+infestor was. No one knew in early HotS how boring Swarm Hosts would become.
Just try new stuff, practice harder, think! After all, this is a strategy game, so strategy should be involved, somehow.
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On March 20 2016 13:08 TheEmulator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better. Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog.
Pretty much this, it's just any player who's under performing or feeling insecure with their gameplay will definitely fee like they're being attacked.
I wont go much into balance because I could talk for ages. Beta's over and we wont see any more crazy patches IMO unless it gets figured out and patched (like MMA/Boxer BFH builds), we know how Blizzard do it, atleast they're keep us more updated and I think most people turn that into hope for more patches but they like to 'check the stats' as people know.
Personally speaking, I enjoy LotV more (especially as a caster) than HotS and I feel there's a huge amount left to be figured out, I'd say kinda say its balanced through imbalance with all the crazy shit each race can do.
Also stop talking about the temp ban, this is a blog post not general and we're on TL not reddit.
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On March 20 2016 13:21 HyDrA_solic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 13:04 avilo wrote:
Imo there should be a balance. I do not think it's wrong for progamers to comment on balance/design when, for example, right now we are seeing games where ravagers are literally being spammed 100% in almost every match-up, or things like mech being completely killed in LOTV.
I mean, i 100% agree with Nony's OP if this were brood war. But it's not...and that's because brood war was almost perfectly balanced. With LOTV...you have stuff like an invulnerable nydus worm in the game...in my opinion when there are things like this that are unhealthy for the gameplay for pros and joes and viewers alike...people need to speak up and get blizzard to get that out of the game or tweak it.
SC2 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay different from Brood War...there are many things in SC2 that are absurdly broken in one way or another that are left alone for months at a time, and no, there will never be "progamer solutions" to those because they are fundamentally broken game mechanics (mass air, invincible nydus, current ravager stats, etc.)
I mean, blizzard basically patches so little already...if anything most of the SC2 community should be asking for more patches. It just boils down to SC2 is a way different game than BW and no where near as balanced.
If we all wanna "let the pros figure it out" then GL having 0% mech games for the entire rest of SC2's lifetime after blizzard already made changes to kill mech.
Do you realize the time that BW took to balance? Even then Koreans were better. Always will be better. Why? They blame balance too, they're humans too. However, their way of effort, to get the job done, is way different than us foreigners. I'll take you for example, you constantly whine and whine about balance in your stream, yet I do not see you changing your playstyle 1 bit. I always like to use the example: Hey, if (KR Terran Progamer) was in my position, would he lose? Or would he say with 100% that everything that beats us is imba, and it's blizzard fault? LotV is still fresh (BW and SC2 wise) and we cannot tolerate major changes to a game this fresh. I see ravagers, I see ravagers getting beat down. The game is still evolving, and there are major aspects we're still missing. No one knew in the early days of WoL how imba BL+infestor was. No one knew in early HotS how boring Swarm Hosts would become. Just try new stuff, practice harder, think! After all, this is a strategy game, so strategy should be involved, somehow.
BW had only ONE huge balance pass which was patch 1.08 iirc and after that nothing else was ever changed and the game happened to be perfectly balanced whether by luck or the designers were very competent.
After that patch, it was all on players/maps, but there was nothing blatantly bad balance wise.
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It's really apples and oranges. No one complains to a balance team that doesn't exist. Just like no one goes to get a pizza out of the oven when it's not there for the taking, no matter how much you wish it was. Truth of the matter is, if you're not vocal about imbalance, then priority shifts to whoever yells the loudest. For instance, mech, lol...
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the game happened to be perfectly balanced whether by luck or the designers were very competent.
given tho the metagame has changed dramatically over time without patches it's save to say it's luck unless Blizzard calculated how the game would be played out in 2016. And maps, don't forget maps
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On March 20 2016 08:21 HuK wrote:
The problem is that whining or complaining or the general community outlook on the game directly and significantly effects balance change/issues. Also suggestions made by pros/others can/will come into effect. So when pros do spend time doing these things it can actually impact their jobs. I WISH Blizzard had a intelligent and self sufficient balance team that ignored the community like other game developers or that the game was decently balanced and could be balanced purely off of maps made my competitive leagues like in BW.
This is the difference between SC2 and BW. It's worth it for a pro player to campaign his own ideas on balance because it has a real chance of impacting his win rate.
The continual balancing act is a real problem in StarCraft but sort of accepted in other popular games (CS/Dota/LoL) because the tools at each players' disposal aren't shared. There's too much rote learning involved for a player to realistically race swap to take advantage of balance or the state of a meta game.
It's honestly something close to a miracle that BW managed to develop itself so organically over such a length of time with so many complex interactions between the races. Maybe it can be credited to the lack of meddling from developers. It would certainly be interesting to see how SC2 would have developed if there had been no patching between expansions.
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Canada11350 Posts
On March 20 2016 06:21 HewTheTitan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 00:44 SC2FeaR wrote:
woah still trying to stay relevant somehow?
User was temp banned for this post. Temp banned for sassing a guy who insulted half the pro scene? I think Nony asked for some counter swings, no?
You can take it website feedback if you have further concerns, but a person that joined this year and has 5 posts to their name could try a little harder with a vet of TL and the Starcraft scene.
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On March 20 2016 07:00 Jakamakala wrote:
Just be like avilo. The guy has been trying to save the game and its spot in the e-sports team for years now. He tries to play his best all the time, constructively analyzes his play, and goes out of his way to also weed out hackers and cheaters. This is all in addition to him providing meaningful and well thought out suggestions to the devs on the official battle.net forums. Our role model and answers are right in front of us guys, we just need to listen to him.
Absolute delusion at its finest.
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On March 20 2016 05:15 NonY wrote:
But there's no teamwork or coaching in SC. You never have to speak a word of any language to become the best SC player in the world. And you've already boiled down your culture assimilation thing to just (1) surround yourself with other talented SC players/analysts and (2) be able to communicate with those people. There's a lot more to culture than that. Certainly the web of relationships between such a group of people will establish some kind of culture itself. But it wouldn't require an individual to adapt Korean culture specifically.
edit: And before you say the Koreans actually have coaches, they really don't. The player is on his own once the game starts. The coaches are more like trainers and managers. They help you train and prepare but once the game starts, there's no coaching going on. They make decisions for team leagues so they kind of play a meta game against the other coaches but that's irrelevant to player skill.
I think that having discussions with players and analysts can be beneficial but not necessary. So many games are played that you only have to watch the games themselves to see a true statement about the game itself rather than listen to words of other players to learn truths about the game. This sentiment being common is the #1 reason why foreign SC2 has never been and will never be successful. No offense, Nony, this doesn't just come from you. But you couldn't be more wrong.
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On March 20 2016 17:51 bduddy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 05:15 NonY wrote:
But there's no teamwork or coaching in SC. You never have to speak a word of any language to become the best SC player in the world. And you've already boiled down your culture assimilation thing to just (1) surround yourself with other talented SC players/analysts and (2) be able to communicate with those people. There's a lot more to culture than that. Certainly the web of relationships between such a group of people will establish some kind of culture itself. But it wouldn't require an individual to adapt Korean culture specifically.
edit: And before you say the Koreans actually have coaches, they really don't. The player is on his own once the game starts. The coaches are more like trainers and managers. They help you train and prepare but once the game starts, there's no coaching going on. They make decisions for team leagues so they kind of play a meta game against the other coaches but that's irrelevant to player skill.
I think that having discussions with players and analysts can be beneficial but not necessary. So many games are played that you only have to watch the games themselves to see a true statement about the game itself rather than listen to words of other players to learn truths about the game. This sentiment being common is the #1 reason why foreign SC2 has never been and will never be successful. No offense, Nony, this doesn't just come from you. But you couldn't be more wrong.
lmao you realize the man you're saying is "completely wrong" is someone who lived and practiced in korea for a BW proleague team right?
it's funny seeing all these really cute posters trying to share their precious "insights" and not have a clue what they're talking about while trying to argue against someone who was good enough to be part of the system, especially at a time when teamhouse conditions were more strict and forced their players to practice way more than they do now.
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On March 20 2016 17:51 bduddy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 05:15 NonY wrote:
But there's no teamwork or coaching in SC. You never have to speak a word of any language to become the best SC player in the world. And you've already boiled down your culture assimilation thing to just (1) surround yourself with other talented SC players/analysts and (2) be able to communicate with those people. There's a lot more to culture than that. Certainly the web of relationships between such a group of people will establish some kind of culture itself. But it wouldn't require an individual to adapt Korean culture specifically.
edit: And before you say the Koreans actually have coaches, they really don't. The player is on his own once the game starts. The coaches are more like trainers and managers. They help you train and prepare but once the game starts, there's no coaching going on. They make decisions for team leagues so they kind of play a meta game against the other coaches but that's irrelevant to player skill.
I think that having discussions with players and analysts can be beneficial but not necessary. So many games are played that you only have to watch the games themselves to see a true statement about the game itself rather than listen to words of other players to learn truths about the game. This sentiment being common is the #1 reason why foreign SC2 has never been and will never be successful. No offense, Nony, this doesn't just come from you. But you couldn't be more wrong.
Why do you think so? In lol the west has almost the same infrastructure (team houses, coaches, analyists) and their still a giant joke compared to korea.
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I think the difference in Korea - West comes from a lot of different issues that sum up.
Koreans tend to find more Joy in perfecting the same build, and playing the most efficient way possible. Carriers arent viable - lets only make them to troll.
Foreigners try to be more creative - they try to find the games where they can make carriers. They try to outsmart their opponent.
LoL and Starcraft are much bigger in society. The internet cafes in Korea and China ive been to, it takes you a few minutes walking distance and youll find one. For a 300k person city, i saw at least 15 with 70-150 pcs. While in my home city of the same size there isnt a single one.
If you have 200 people playing starcraft it will be easier to find talent than if there are 5.
Esports also explodes in lower income households, of which there are a lot in asia / eastern europe - Of course there are exceptions, but $10 for internet a month and $500 for a pc every 4 years is affordable to most.
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Having read the thread, I keep wondering where else the same attitude could be applied. Other games? Sure. Labor market? Like hell - "quit whining, work harder"! Disruptive economy? Ditto - "if you don't like Uber's model, come up with a better one".
The point is: I see completely no reason to criticize people who play the game profesionally for lobbying. Because that's essentially what they're doing. SC2 doesn't differ that much from any other industries.
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I'm in no way a pro gamer and never have been, but just philosophically it's true that in order to win you need to be better than your opponent whether they're your average ladder hero during practice or Zest/Maru/Dark at Blizzcon.
I think the method of delivery is perhaps jagged and uncomfortable to swallow (who wants to be compared to a US Senator, after all) but it is really a simple tautology that Nony is reminding us of.
That said, Blizzard is reaching out in unprecedented ways to the community. However, that definitely remains a secondary pursuit to increasing overall skill as waiting for -1 adept damage isn't a solution to facing the ultimate opponent. Interesting point to bring up/remind people of.
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Make progaming great again. - Nony Trump
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 15:10 pique wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 08:21 HuK wrote:
The problem is that whining or complaining or the general community outlook on the game directly and significantly effects balance change/issues. Also suggestions made by pros/others can/will come into effect. So when pros do spend time doing these things it can actually impact their jobs. I WISH Blizzard had a intelligent and self sufficient balance team that ignored the community like other game developers or that the game was decently balanced and could be balanced purely off of maps made my competitive leagues like in BW. This is the difference between SC2 and BW. It's worth it for a pro player to campaign his own ideas on balance because it has a real chance of impacting his win rate.
If the top non-Korean players were SO competitive that they dispassionately calculated what feedback to give Blizzard in order to give themselves the best shot of winning, then I think there'd be more evidence of this ultra-competitive cutthroat culture. It's simply not the case. What is the case is this: Progamer runs into a problem that is lowering his win rate. There are a number of ways to tackle this problem, with multiple opportunities to improve mechanics or tweak tactics, or the problem can be avoided completely by doing an entirely different strategy or style of play, etc. In addition to all the avenues of self-improvement to explore, in all likelihood there already exists another player who wouldn't be losing in the situations that are problematic for this player. There's proof it's possible and maybe even some tournament matches to directly copy as a starting point. Despite all this, the line of thinking that the progamer gets emotionally invested in is this: the game is broken and needs to be changed.
I wish I could just say "the rules of the game are out of a player's control and a player needs to focus on what can be controlled" but I know it's not literally the case because these players can have some influence on the development of the game. So what I'm saying is that if you want to do what's best for you as a progamer, then forgetting this influence exists is best for your own self-improvement. And if you want to do what's best for the game's development, then becoming the best player you can be and actually putting games out there to show how you respond to the problems you encounter is the most valuable feedback you can give to Blizzard. If you are worried about what's "fun" to play and "entertaining" to watch as a progamer when you are an entire tier of skill behind other progamers, then your priorities are totally off.
The only special thing about a pro player's feedback is that it's backed up by actual games played at the highest level. But if you're not actually at the highest level or you don't have the games played to support what you're saying, then your words aren't very valuable. And even when the actual top players do speak with games to back up their words, they have to be humble with respect to what's possible that hasn't been discovered or perfected yet.
The REALLY cool parts of BW were these discoveries of things that the best players in the world previously thought were not possible or would never be viable. Progamers should be seeking these things out. Try to prove that what you're doing is overpowered and needs to be nerfed, not that what your opponent is doing is overpowered. And when a strategy seems unbeatable and is on the brink of being nerfed, try to be the one to prove that it's beatable without being nerfed. You're gonna get a lot of important wins from doing these things. It'll be REALLY awesome to watch and it'll be good for the development of the game. This is the ideal role a progamer should be playing.
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8748 Posts
On March 20 2016 20:54 corydoras wrote:
Having read the thread, I keep wondering where else the same attitude could be applied. Other games? Sure. Labor market? Like hell - "quit whining, work harder"! Disruptive economy? Ditto - "if you don't like Uber's model, come up with a better one".
The point is: I see completely no reason to criticize people who play the game profesionally for lobbying. Because that's essentially what they're doing. SC2 doesn't differ that much from any other industries.
It's a matter of mindset. IDK if you watch sports, like basketball is pretty popular this time of year at least in America, but there's an idea that teams benefit from at least one player being a "talker" or an "enforcer" as someone who will complain about calls to the refs, not back down against opposing players, etc. Basically, someone on the team needs to get heated and kind of be the mouthpiece for the team's unspoken frustrations because that'll benefit the team overall. But most guys aren't cut out to be that guy. They need to focus on the game. They're focused on the game but they still notice things and having a guy be the vent for those things helps them. They don't have to worry about those things because their guy is gonna take care of it. Sometimes it's the coach. It's great to have someone act like this on your behalf, but if you built a whole team of guys like that, then it'd be a mess.
There's gotta be a guy who bears that extra burden. Or a guy for whom it isn't actually an extra burden -- their brain is wired to thrive on paying attention and giving emotional energy to that stuff. But most people doing the actual work are best off by focusing on their work. For SC2 players, it should be enough to know that Blizzard is not ignorant of their efforts. If players are struggling with something when it matters (a major tournament), then Blizzard knows. The games are their feedback. Sticking to your role as a progamer is best for everyone. Let the coaches or the analysts offer their interpretations to Blizzard.
If there was no one else and Blizzard was very hands-off and the players we were talking about were not second class players (behind the top Koreans), then I feel like it might start to become right for the players to feel pressure to take on this burden. But given that they're not even that good, then the first step is to get good. Given that Blizzard already pays attention to all of their matches and keeps track of balance statistically, then there's no reason to get in their face about it. Given that there are other people who can speak up, don't volunteer yourself for this extra duty.
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The anti-competitive mindset in the foreigner scene is palpable. I can't help but mention Life vs Lilbow in blizzcon. Lilbow felt no shame to say that he only practiced 2 games or so during an entire month. This isn't even a matter of progamers spending time to advocate for a balance patch rather than practicing. It's dubious how much they are committed in the first place to become the best they can be.
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France12880 Posts
On March 20 2016 23:21 Deathstar wrote:
The anti-competitive mindset in the foreigner scene is palpable. I can't help but mention Life vs Lilbow in blizzcon. Lilbow felt no shame to say that he only practiced 2 games or so during an entire month. This isn't even a matter of progamers spending time to advocate for a balance patch rather than practicing. It's dubious how much they are committed in the first place to become the best they can be.
Lilbow's statements have nothing to do with competitive or anti-competitive mindset, it's just ego protection, which is a sign of healthy competitive spirit.
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I guess I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to say that I don't see why progamers should have to act differently from everyone else. Just because you do something as a job doesn't mean that you must not have an opinion anymore, or no right to voice it.
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On March 20 2016 23:21 Deathstar wrote:
The anti-competitive mindset in the foreigner scene is palpable. I can't help but mention Life vs Lilbow in blizzcon. Lilbow felt no shame to say that he only practiced 2 games or so during an entire month. This isn't even a matter of progamers spending time to advocate for a balance patch rather than practicing. It's dubious how much they are committed in the first place to become the best they can be.
it is a cultural difference. best way to gain the competitive mindset is to immerse yourself in the culture of the best in the world. that applies to any competitive pursuit.
is that the path of least resistance? ya
is it fucking brutal? yes it is.
life is tough. ( pun and double meaning intended )
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Nony this reminds of of the 4 gate pvp era when you eventually came up with a build that was not a 4 gate but effectively beat it. I honestly thinks its a tragedy that 4 gate was nerfed when you figured out how to win in a previously thought impossible way.
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On March 20 2016 13:08 TheEmulator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better. Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog. Totally agreed.
Anyone's capable of anything, region has nothing to do with it. It's about work ethic, the person's mentality towards the game, and dedication towards the game. Koreans are not genetically superior to non-Koreans to play an RTS game, despite the majority of people being under a similar impression.
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Norway28665 Posts
On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world. the only time a foreign pro will have a legit shot at becoming world champ is if he or she does like grrrr did more than a decade ago. your thoughts?
Hey, I remember that you made this assertion before, more than 6 months ago. And as I replied then ;
'Also, jimmyjraynor, I really can't agree with your claim that Giyom's success was caused by his korean assimilation. I don't know when you started following competitive brood war, but Giyom was basically the best player in the world before he went to Korea. He won PGL season 4 and the Brood War World Championship in 1999, two of the absolutely biggest tournaments that year, and went to Korea in early 2000.
Additionally, it's not like Korea was really dominant during this era anyway. I'd argue that in 1999, there were more top players outside Korea than inside Korea - this changes for sure in 2000 though, and might not have been true at the end of 99 either. Slayer won KBK in 2000 as well - this was an era where nonkorean players actually could compete with the Koreans. If the OSL Giyom won had had 50% koreans and 50% the best players from outside Korea, it easily could have been a nonkorean final.
in fact Giyom is a funny example to use because you could just as well argue that his assimilation into Korean culture and learning the language is what caused his brood war downfall lol'
The idea that Giyom became so good at brood war because he moved to Korea simply isn't true. It is a very different era though - and stating that a nonkorean in say, 2008, would have to move to korea if he hoped to become one of the best, that's fair enough, but the Giyom story doesn't support your assertion.
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agree completely.. people need to man the fuck up. if you plan on being a progamer, you must first understand that the starcraft competitive scene is A COMPETITIVE SCENE. you aim to play better than anyone else on the planet, not complain about losing.
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Seeing the Lilbow fiasco at the last Blizzcon proves to a certain extent what Nony is saying here.
If the (quite possibly) best foreigner at that time couldn't give a #### about the Most Prestigious Tournament of the year, it really speaks a lot about the mentality of some foreigners.
But, that being said, there are also players who are definitely working hard and trying their best to become better players.
It's just not as easy as Nony says. Not as easy as "Aiming to defeat the koreans".
If mentality and attitude is all that matters, at every world cup, be it football or rugby, we would be seeing all the teams at the same level and completely even-matched games.
We all know that will never be true. There will always be countries which are better. And is it because that the other countries are just not trying hard enough or their mentality is bad.
No way. Some countries are doing better because their infrastructure is already there. Their talent pool is already there. The environment to become better at the sport is already there.
If it is as easy as Nony implies, then we should have football clubs in Africa being able to beat Barcelona or Real Madrid just by working harder and "aiming to beat them".
It's just the same for SC2, Korea already has the infrastructure and that's why their players already start off ahead of foreigners.
Working their ass off, is just not going to cut it. There is a lot more things that foreigners need to overcome compared to koreans and what Blizzard is trying to do with WCS, i feel is trying to build up the foreign scene and slowly establish the infrastructure in the foreign scene as well.
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On March 21 2016 02:00 Liquid`Drone wrote:
in fact Giyom is a funny example to use because you could just as well argue that his assimilation into Korean culture and learning the language is what caused his brood war downfall lol'
The idea that Giyom became so good at brood war because he moved to Korea simply isn't true. It is a very different era though - and stating that a nonkorean in say, 2008, would have to move to korea if he hoped to become one of the best, that's fair enough, but the Giyom story doesn't support your assertion.
interesting insight.
i don't want to derail any further if u want to PM me and we can continue that's cool.
+ Show Spoiler +
didn't all the best players all hang out together 2000-2003 in Soeul ? wasn't Patry part of that informal social gang? and wasn't their primary method of communication Korean?
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all the best chess players are from the Soviet Union I guess I need to move to Moscow and learn Russian because it's their primary mode of communication!!!
oh wait I'm Bobby Fischer and I can just study the game and SU games without having to be culturally indoctrinated
cmon dude LOL
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this is like the streamer who actually believes using Korean characters and Korean sounds and listening to KPOP as he ladders will make his game better.
that's not how it works!!!
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On March 21 2016 01:10 JeffKim wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 13:08 TheEmulator wrote:On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better. Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog. Totally agreed. Anyone's capable of anything, region has nothing to do with it. It's about work ethic, the person's mentality towards the game, and dedication towards the game. Koreans are not genetically superior to non-Koreans to play an RTS game, despite the majority of people being under a similar impression.
it would seem that pitching a baseball is the same. it has nothing to do with being American and speaking English. and it is an entirely individual pursuit. theoretically, any one can be the best baseball pitcher.
long meandering story.
+ Show Spoiler +Let us imagine a french speaking guy living only a 3 hour drive north of the Boston Red Sox home park. and lets imagine this Canadian town is a french speaking hockey-town. and let's pretend our imaginary guy is named Eric Gagne.
He has only 1 path to becoming the best baseball pitcher on planet earth. Move South, learn english and surround himself with the best of the best in the baseball world. And these guys speak English and Spanish. They don't speak french.
THe probability of Eric Gagne reaching the levels he did by staying in Quebec is approximately zero.
His route to being #1 was tougher than any kid born in California in some town that produces Major League Baseball players by the dozen. But he wanted to be #1 so he did the extra work.
This is how region impacts competitive pursuits. Non-Koreans will have to do more work.. that's just the way it is.
On March 21 2016 03:21 BeStFAN wrote:
all the best chess players are from the Soviet Union I guess I need to move to Moscow and learn Russian because it's their primary mode of communication!!!
oh wait I'm Bobby Fischer and I can just study the game and SU games without having to be culturally indoctrinated
cmon dude LOL
read story above.
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Yeah Nony, I am sure the game is perfect and progamers are just lazy... . I think this is a joke? Most likely not I guess.
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the irony of this post is overwhelming
a former pro whining about current pro's who whine about balance
blizzard opened it up about 'community' discussions.. and you're mad that the top end gamers in the community chime in on that discussion when encouraged?
laughable
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On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good.
Nony your totally right on this. (Some Fanboy ♥)
I´m turning 35 this year (played BW casual) didn`t like WoL or HotS too much but LotV feels alot more like "Starcarft" to me.
Anyway:
I`ve watched nearly 90% of every Korean SC2 TV Match and every major non-Korean Tournament since release of the game. With that said the foreigners nearly seemed to get crushed all the time in the big games. I mean the World Championship of Starcraft and all Koreans in the Bracket?? I dont want to see this anymore and I dont think anyone else does niether, its been a sad 6 years of SC2 and I Agree with Nony that this year we have to have a Non-korean in the FINALS!
Progamers: Do Your Job
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On March 21 2016 03:22 BeStFAN wrote:
this is like the streamer who actually believes using Korean characters and Korean sounds and listening to KPOP as he ladders will make his game better.
that's not how it works!!!
i dont know why but this reminds me of  http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/DarKFoRcE
lmao :D
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Nony is right. If even one foreigner at Blizzcon wins his initial match vs. a Korean, I'll try to re-think my opinion towards WCS. I'm fed up with qxc making balance posts, change after change after change - this is no beta anymore. It is a game that should be played, and that's it. Foreigners have received a huge WCS gift from Blizzard and I will laugh my ass off if those circuit players altogether lose at blizzcon, lolbow style.
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On March 20 2016 23:02 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 20:54 corydoras wrote:
Having read the thread, I keep wondering where else the same attitude could be applied. Other games? Sure. Labor market? Like hell - "quit whining, work harder"! Disruptive economy? Ditto - "if you don't like Uber's model, come up with a better one".
The point is: I see completely no reason to criticize people who play the game profesionally for lobbying. Because that's essentially what they're doing. SC2 doesn't differ that much from any other industries. It's a matter of mindset. IDK if you watch sports, like basketball is pretty popular this time of year at least in America, but there's an idea that teams benefit from at least one player being a "talker" or an "enforcer" as someone who will complain about calls to the refs, not back down against opposing players, etc. Basically, someone on the team needs to get heated and kind of be the mouthpiece for the team's unspoken frustrations because that'll benefit the team overall. But most guys aren't cut out to be that guy. They need to focus on the game. They're focused on the game but they still notice things and having a guy be the vent for those things helps them. They don't have to worry about those things because their guy is gonna take care of it. Sometimes it's the coach. It's great to have someone act like this on your behalf, but if you built a whole team of guys like that, then it'd be a mess.
I see your point. I actually follow pro basketball (mostly NBA) and you surely know there is a LOT of lobbying there. I think it's a better example then referring to on-court 'talkers'. There is lobbying with regard to policies (consider discussions whether hack-a-Shaq should be allowed or whether the so called rip move should lead to so many foul calls) and individual decisions (trying to influence the league to reduce individual penalties, whic is nicely desribed in "Seven Seconds or Less"). The difference is that in pro SC2, the foreign scene seems to be less organized and it is up to the players to lobby. If the infrastructure was as well developed as in pro basketball, you would be right in most cases. But it's not, hopefully not yet.
But still, in traditional sports you will see pro players directly involved in lobbying (like during the collective bargaining agreement negotiations) or at least making their voices heard during the ongoing discussions (for example about flopping). I don't mind that.
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8748 Posts
On March 21 2016 04:04 404AlphaSquad wrote:
Yeah Nony, I am sure the game is perfect and progamers are just lazy... . I think this is a joke? Most likely not I guess.
Not saying the game is perfect. I'm saying that the best way for progamers to contribute to the health of the game is to learn as much about it as possible and become as proficient at playing it as possible and then to show us all that knowledge and skill in tournaments. History of SC2 and BW has shown repeatedly that breakthroughs in mechanics and strategy can make the impossible possible. The job of the progamer is to work on those things. Blizzard is monitoring the pro scene and will take action if something is too strong for too long. The real beauty of the game comes through when the game changes without any patch. Players have not been giving themselves nearly enough time to let things develop before they're asking Blizzard to make changes. Such behavior is a symptom of a poor competitive mindset.
When Blizzard wants the opinions of players, they will ask. Those lines of communication are established. In the meantime, they communicate through their games.
On March 21 2016 05:48 corydoras wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 23:02 NonY wrote:On March 20 2016 20:54 corydoras wrote:
Having read the thread, I keep wondering where else the same attitude could be applied. Other games? Sure. Labor market? Like hell - "quit whining, work harder"! Disruptive economy? Ditto - "if you don't like Uber's model, come up with a better one".
The point is: I see completely no reason to criticize people who play the game profesionally for lobbying. Because that's essentially what they're doing. SC2 doesn't differ that much from any other industries. It's a matter of mindset. IDK if you watch sports, like basketball is pretty popular this time of year at least in America, but there's an idea that teams benefit from at least one player being a "talker" or an "enforcer" as someone who will complain about calls to the refs, not back down against opposing players, etc. Basically, someone on the team needs to get heated and kind of be the mouthpiece for the team's unspoken frustrations because that'll benefit the team overall. But most guys aren't cut out to be that guy. They need to focus on the game. They're focused on the game but they still notice things and having a guy be the vent for those things helps them. They don't have to worry about those things because their guy is gonna take care of it. Sometimes it's the coach. It's great to have someone act like this on your behalf, but if you built a whole team of guys like that, then it'd be a mess. I see your point. I actually follow pro basketball (mostly NBA) and you surely know there is a LOT of lobbying there. I think it's a better example then referring to on-court 'talkers'. There is lobbying with regard to policies (consider discussions whether hack-a-Shaq should be allowed or whether the so called rip move should lead to so many foul calls) and individual decisions (trying to influence the league to reduce individual penalties, whic is nicely desribed in "Seven Seconds or Less"). The difference is that in pro SC2, the foreign scene seems to be less organized and it is up to the players to lobby. If the infrastructure was as well developed as in pro basketball, you would be right in most cases. But it's not, hopefully not yet. But still, in traditional sports you will see pro players directly involved in lobbying (like during the collective bargaining agreement negotiations) or at least making their voices heard during the ongoing discussions (for example about flopping). I don't mind that.
Yeah, when you start trying to draw on experience from sports that are so different for a million reasons, you've gotta be careful with your comparisons. It's easy to be intellectually dishonest and only use the comparisons that favor your argument (not saying that you did or that I did, just saying it's a tricky thing to do). Not only are there issues like rule changes in the NBA, but in a more direct way, players are constantly influencing the refs during a game to try to get the calls they want. My fav player in the league for a couple years now has been Kawhi Leonard and now it seems like it's getting to the point where being quiet might be a disadvantage because he needs to learn how to "work the refs." I think JVG even mentioned it last night. This kind of stuff could easily be used in an argument against me. But some NBA players ruin their own games by chasing calls or getting upset about calls against them. That's obviously a problem. And the equivalent to that for SC2 players is something that shouldn't even be a risk, in my opinion, because the best thing for them to do, for themselves and everyone else, is to not even think about the "refs" or the rule makers.
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The fact that foreigners in general suck compared with Koreans is absolutely no indicator of how good or bad the game is. Koreans don't complain because they're really disciplined, but for all we know half of them may be dreaming about playing LoL at night and the other half thinking about retiring.
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nony is right, not much to add to the subject rlly.
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This is kind of a very vague argument to make. Nony seems to agree that progamers have a right to comment on imbalances, but that their focus should be on the game - what exactly does this mean in practical terms? How do you quantify that?
For example if someone like Huk writes a lengthy balance post on TL, is that enough of a distraction from his practise time that he is now 'not focusing on the game', or is it in actual fact, sufficiently minor that he should be "allowed" to make it under Nony's criteria? How do you tell what a person's gaming schedule is, how much they focus on it compared to posting, and when it has gone too far?
You certainly can't make the absolutist claim that they should *only* focus on winning. If there really are egregious balance issues that seriously detract from the enjoyability of the game for the person who is playing, and the viewers at large, then it merits pointing these things out if it doesn't look like Blizzard is aware of them. So again the question seems relative; some pros may feel certain issues are of fundamental importance and are damaging the game, and that they should be pointed out, while others may not feel this way. How do you tell which is which?
In the cases where their criticisms are universally seen as valid, and they have free time that they want to spend trying to point things out to the community and blizzard, then why not? If they are important issues that aren't being addressed I don't see what is wrong.
Basically I feel like all of this stuff is relative. It makes sense that the progamer's first goal should be to win games, that is clear. But emphasizing that is embracing a truism that everyone already knows. To be absolutist is to go too far, especially because pro's have free time and they should be allowed to do what they want. To say their focus has 'slipped' is to make a judgement that can't really be verified by any evidence, or to make a claim that seems highly relative to the person.
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8748 Posts
On March 21 2016 09:01 radscorpion9 wrote:
This is kind of a very vague argument to make. Nony seems to agree that progamers have a right to comment on imbalances, but that their focus should be on the game - what exactly does this mean in practical terms? How do you quantify that?
For example if someone like Huk writes a lengthy balance post on TL, is that enough of a distraction from his practise time that he is now 'not focusing on the game', or is it sufficiently minor that he should be allowed to make it? It seems to me, that in order to be sufficiently dedicated as Nony wants, one shouldn't have the time to make any suggestions on balance, because that is a distraction. But how much of a distraction is it really, can you really quantify it? This is not clear.
But maybe its just meant to be taken as general advice. In case pros are spending too much time critiquing (and we will let them decide if that's the case for themselves), they need to remember their primary goal is to win tournaments and help bolster the 'foreigner' pride. I'm not even sure whether this is true. If there really are egregious balance issues that seriously detract from the enjoyability of the game for the person who is playing, and the viewers at large, then it merits pointing these things out if it doesn't look like Blizzard is aware of them. So again the question seems relative; some pros may feel certain issues are of fundamental importance and are damaging the game, and that they should be pointed out, while others may not feel this way.
I don't see how one can argue that their statements are correct or misguided, or that we should relegate that authority to only one body. If they have free time, and they want to spend time trying to impact the dialogue, then why not? If they are important issues that aren't being addressed I don't see what is wrong.
Basically I feel like all of this stuff is relative. It makes sense that the progamer's first goal should be to win games, that is clear. But emphasizing that is embracing a truism that everyone already knows. To say that it should be to mostly focus on winning games, and only when necessary make balance posts, is something which no one can say for sure.
Already said it's not about time but rather how a player thinks about a game. They're encountering some kind of problem while they're playing the game and having a mindset toward the game that even considers whether rewriting the rules is necessary is not a good competitive mindset. It is possible to dispassionately comment on the game when in a different state of mind than practicing/competing, but what is the point? It's not productive. They aren't game designers. They aren't the best players. They're hardly ever saying anything original (that SC2 devs don't already know). Anything they say must be backed up by evidence (tournament matches) which the SC2 devs have already seen anyway. Most of the feedback recently hasn't been backed by meta data (tournament statistics).
If it's what some people want to do as a hobby, fine I guess. But for most non-Korean players, there should be a sense of urgency to massively improve and catch up to the best players in the world. I think every pro giving feedback is trying to do what's best for the scene and what's best for everyone and contribute any way they can. My blog is giving my opinion on how they can do that.
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Yeah, this is pretty much what is happening in this thread...
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Does the current race distribution in the Korean scene not suggest the game is currently very well balanced? Funny how people are often only complaining that the race they play is underpowered...
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On the one hand I agree with everything Nony said. But really why do they need to get good anymore? They have WCS Welfare. Who cares if the first round of Blizzcon will make the Lolbow fiasco look like the GSL Finals? Foreigners get their free money. Which seems to please a lot of people here.
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I think, if Mana spends thousands of hours playing the game, we should be very thankful when he takes the time to write down his thoughts, since he propably is one of the top 100 or 50 most qualified people to give feedback. He has been playing since BW, and is spending hours and hours every day, trying to improve and get better. He does not need to be told to get better, he is trying, every day. So every time he takes some time to talk about the game, I consider this very valuable and it should be ecouraged and celebrated imo.
Telling pros to focus on getting better is unnecessary and redundant, they are already doing that. Taking 30 minutes to write a post, with the hope to make the game better for everyone, does not suddenly change that.
"But back in my day we would just deal with it, after walking 2 hours on foot to get to the only PC in the city that had BW installed, we would still play Saviour on imbalanced maps..."
Well guess what, it's 2016. Times change, we should move forward and not backwards. Were are in an era of open communication with Blizzard, something which has been requested for years, and it's awesome. LotV is better than sc2 ever was. Why? Because they took feedback from pros and the community and integrated it into the game. LotV will (hopefully) continue to change and the community and pros will both be heavily involved in that process.
Don't shit on pros when they have something to say, be thankful for the input.
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5 out of 5, would read again.
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This thread, taken as a whole, is just another sign to me of how much the community in general has changed (and arguably degraded) since the days of BW, and even WoL.
The idea (per avilo) that BW was just "perfectly balanced" (having arrived in a thunderbolt out of heaven in a once-in-a-million-years miracle) is like the biggest urban legend in all of Esports, and one of the most detrimental ones for the SC2 scene. The truth is, balance was all over the place in BW during its height. There were all kinds of crazy units and strats that could be insanely imbalanced based on the maps. There were seasons of the OSL where Zerg lost almost every single PvZ...and seasons where Protoss lost almost every single PvZ...and so on and so forth. Progamers occasionally complained about balance, and people on TL created threads about it. But in the end, everyone knew that there wasn't too much they could do about it, and maps and crazy new strategies were created to deal with these problems. The (tiny) community was committed to the game, and the progamers were committed to getting better no matter what. If they wanted mech to work, then they went out and karking made it work-- like Fantasy made mech TvZ a thing after years of everyone being totally convinced that bio was the only viable strat in the match-up.
+ Show Spoiler [BW Balance Whine] +Even after all these years, though, I still think that at the very highest level P is the weakest race in BW. Pity us!
More than this, everything NonY is saying is completely true, just on the level of basic competitive mindset, as should be fairly obvious. No one in competitive swimming (my own past sport, and one that's more similar to SC given its individual nature) lobbies to get the backstroke changed. I have no desire to criticize current foreign pros (many of whom I'm big fans of), but when half of many progamers' tweets are balance complaints following losses, it's not hard to say that this is hardly a healthy mindset for being the best. For crying out loud, there's a real conversation in the community and among progamers right now over which race whines the hardest, and whether this leads to them getting undue attention and buffs--and you think that's a healthy competitive mindset?
Yeah, I know, "the game is garbage" and "there are major design issues" and "David Kim is incompetent and arrogant" and "x strat is completely broken" and "terran are all whiners who get all the buffs" and "P never gets any buffs"...but you can repeat those slogans from now to eternity, and it won't change the fact that this is an extremely unhealthy mindset for actual competitors to take.
NonY's post isn't necessarily a swipe against big, well-thought-out TL posts by Huk or whatever--nor is it an insult against foreign pros and the hard work they put in. It's a challenge to a hugely negative and anti-competitive mindset that's taken root in the community and among some pros. Heck, it's practically a friendly suggestion, from one of the all-time greats of foreign SC. Take it as such.
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Norway839 Posts
i can understand this masculine man-up approach getting a lot of general support but i would like to remind everyone of the tournament games that were played before the adept fix was brought in. These issues were very obvious and in my opinion lowered the quality of the game as a whole, and i think most pro-gamers, anywhere in between high/gm or ~1500+ aligulac or gsl champ/~2500 could make competent calls and comments about the pre-patch adept.
The "stfu" arguments are understandable but i think what happened to the adept and the professional outcries surrounding its issues was a good thing and I wouldn't have traded that for another month of tournament games on the pre-fix patch with nobody speaking their mind and 'trying to find a way around it' be it by building 7 bunkers or proxy-raxing before the adepts even got out. Remember 2013 blink meta? WoL 1/1/1? Broodlord-infestor "kill them before they get there"? At the end of the day it was changed. Swarm Host was eventually changed too, Blizzard said they would've liked to do it sooner.
Swarmhost Viper stalemate ZvZ. About 7 hours were spent on like what 3 games in Lone Star Clash but then part thanks to community/pro input a broodlord buff was introduced that removed the issue and we didn't have to watch 30x 4 hour games of Swarmhost vs Swarmhost ZvZ "proved by pro-gamers to be broken" in pro tournaments before a patch would be finally rolled out. Maps didn't have to be designed around Swarmhost Stalemate ZvZ.
Some times there isn't a "way around it", and in these cases, feedback and patches are for the better.
Compared to Brood War, SC2 has a lot of issues and is patched far more frequently (including expansions) and also a lot of the time some design choices are just flat out questionable (Hellbat vs Hellbat TvT, thankfully-scrapped-in-BETA Warhound).
When HOTS expansion came out, Swarmhost Viper Spore ZvZ became a new issue nobody had seen before. There was no such problem in brood war (thats what it sounds like at least lol), so maybe the mentality to fix it didn't have to be there to begin with? But if you see five 3-hour long ZvZs that ended up in a stalemate despite a player having a "250% advantage" unable to close it out because of a ramp you know that hey, maybe the game might actually benefit (more fair to the player with more winning moves, more entertaining to the audience) from some tweaking of the rules. And it should be okay for professional players to speak out about things like this, Korean or Non-Korean, even in non-mirror match-ups, even if the man-up attitude is so prevalent.
It's all just for the sake of saving time, making progress and fast-forwarding development to a better stage in less time, and I think having everyone be quiet (about warhound, adept, hellbat, swarmhost, broodlord/infestor) and telling everyone to be quiet creates a masculine but occasionally toxic culture where a lot of (sometimes very talented) people with reasonable suggestions will be discouraged from bringing potentially positive feedback to the scene.
I don't think people would enjoy StarCraft 2 as much if it was StarTvT: Micro Battle of the Warhounds with its upcoming expansion "StarTvT Legacy of the Warhound: It is what it is"
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The OP made me smile inside. I am not anywhere close to pro,
but now I feel inspired to go and play some Starcraft.
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On March 21 2016 10:47 Liquid`Snute wrote:
i can understand this masculine man-up approach getting a lot of general support but i would like to remind everyone of the tournament games that were played before the adept fix was brought in. These issues were very obvious and in my opinion lowered the quality of the game as a whole, and i think most pro-gamers, anywhere in between high/gm or ~1500+ aligulac or gsl champ/~2500 could make competent calls and comments about the pre-patch adept.
The "stfu" arguments are understandable but i think what happened to the adept and the professional outcries surrounding its issues was a good thing and I wouldn't have traded that for another month of tournament games on the pre-fix patch with nobody speaking their mind and 'trying to find a way around it' be it by building 7 bunkers or proxy-raxing before the adepts even got out. Remember 2013 blink meta? WoL 1/1/1? Broodlord-infestor "kill them before they get there"? At the end of the day it was changed. Swarm Host was eventually changed too, Blizzard said they would've liked to do it sooner.
Swarmhost Viper stalemate ZvZ. About 7 hours were spent on like what 3 games in Lone Star Clash but then part thanks to community/pro input a broodlord buff was introduced that removed the issue and we didn't have to watch 30x 4 hour games of Swarmhost vs Swarmhost ZvZ "proved by pro-gamers to be broken" in pro tournaments before a patch would be finally rolled out. Maps didn't have to be designed around Swarmhost Stalemate ZvZ.
Some times there isn't a "way around it", and in these cases, feedback and patches are for the better.
Compared to Brood War, SC2 has a lot of issues and is patched far more frequently (including expansions) and also a lot of the time some design choices are just flat out questionable (Hellbat vs Hellbat TvT, thankfully-scrapped-in-BETA Warhound).
When HOTS expansion came out, Swarmhost Viper Spore ZvZ became a new issue nobody had seen before. There was no such problem in brood war (thats what it sounds like at least lol), so maybe the mentality to fix it didn't have to be there to begin with? But if you see five 3-hour long ZvZs that ended up in a stalemate despite a player having a "250% advantage" unable to close it out because of a ramp you know that hey, maybe the game might actually benefit (more fair to the player with more winning moves, more entertaining to the audience) from some tweaking of the rules. And it should be okay for professional players to speak out about things like this, Korean or Non-Korean, even in non-mirror match-ups, even if the man-up attitude is so prevalent.
It's all just for the sake of saving time, making progress and fast-forwarding development to a better stage in less time, and I think having everyone be quiet (about warhound, adept, hellbat, swarmhost, broodlord/infestor) and telling everyone to be quiet creates a masculine but occasionally toxic culture where a lot of (sometimes very talented) people with reasonable suggestions will be discouraged from bringing potentially positive feedback to the scene.
I don't think people would enjoy StarCraft 2 as much if it was StarTvT: Micro Battle of the Warhounds with its upcoming expansion "StarTvT Legacy of the Warhound: It is what it is"
You're stating some obvious design mistakes that were made by Blizzard. However, Nony is wishing for progamers to think before they post. To try to come with strategies to overcome what seems to be difficult to overcome. We have you as an example. You struggled a lot to develop your playstyle in both earlier expansions, yet, you've overcomed those issues.
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Nony is right, get good and make the game interesting.
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On March 21 2016 12:04 HyDrA_solic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 10:47 Liquid`Snute wrote:
i can understand this masculine man-up approach getting a lot of general support but i would like to remind everyone of the tournament games that were played before the adept fix was brought in. These issues were very obvious and in my opinion lowered the quality of the game as a whole, and i think most pro-gamers, anywhere in between high/gm or ~1500+ aligulac or gsl champ/~2500 could make competent calls and comments about the pre-patch adept.
The "stfu" arguments are understandable but i think what happened to the adept and the professional outcries surrounding its issues was a good thing and I wouldn't have traded that for another month of tournament games on the pre-fix patch with nobody speaking their mind and 'trying to find a way around it' be it by building 7 bunkers or proxy-raxing before the adepts even got out. Remember 2013 blink meta? WoL 1/1/1? Broodlord-infestor "kill them before they get there"? At the end of the day it was changed. Swarm Host was eventually changed too, Blizzard said they would've liked to do it sooner.
Swarmhost Viper stalemate ZvZ. About 7 hours were spent on like what 3 games in Lone Star Clash but then part thanks to community/pro input a broodlord buff was introduced that removed the issue and we didn't have to watch 30x 4 hour games of Swarmhost vs Swarmhost ZvZ "proved by pro-gamers to be broken" in pro tournaments before a patch would be finally rolled out. Maps didn't have to be designed around Swarmhost Stalemate ZvZ.
Some times there isn't a "way around it", and in these cases, feedback and patches are for the better.
Compared to Brood War, SC2 has a lot of issues and is patched far more frequently (including expansions) and also a lot of the time some design choices are just flat out questionable (Hellbat vs Hellbat TvT, thankfully-scrapped-in-BETA Warhound).
When HOTS expansion came out, Swarmhost Viper Spore ZvZ became a new issue nobody had seen before. There was no such problem in brood war (thats what it sounds like at least lol), so maybe the mentality to fix it didn't have to be there to begin with? But if you see five 3-hour long ZvZs that ended up in a stalemate despite a player having a "250% advantage" unable to close it out because of a ramp you know that hey, maybe the game might actually benefit (more fair to the player with more winning moves, more entertaining to the audience) from some tweaking of the rules. And it should be okay for professional players to speak out about things like this, Korean or Non-Korean, even in non-mirror match-ups, even if the man-up attitude is so prevalent.
It's all just for the sake of saving time, making progress and fast-forwarding development to a better stage in less time, and I think having everyone be quiet (about warhound, adept, hellbat, swarmhost, broodlord/infestor) and telling everyone to be quiet creates a masculine but occasionally toxic culture where a lot of (sometimes very talented) people with reasonable suggestions will be discouraged from bringing potentially positive feedback to the scene.
I don't think people would enjoy StarCraft 2 as much if it was StarTvT: Micro Battle of the Warhounds with its upcoming expansion "StarTvT Legacy of the Warhound: It is what it is" You're stating some obvious design mistakes that were made by Blizzard. However, Nony is wishing for progamers to think before they post. To try to come with strategies to overcome what seems to be difficult to overcome. We have you as an example. You struggled a lot to develop your playstyle in both earlier expansions, yet, you've overcomed those issues.
I think Snute is well aware that players must be able to come up with strategies to beat their opponents despite the balance/design issues at hand. What he is really saying is that he thinks most players of a certain very high skill level are capable of providing feedback backed up by a strong theoretical understanding. Assuming Terran or Zerg would have found ways to beat the Adept build pre-patch to a say 45% winratio then the Adept would not necessarily be rendered unoverpowered/non-imbalanced/non-designflawed. It was clear that despite any possibility to actually find ways to deal with the Adept, you would either sacrifice your position versus other Protoss builds or Protoss were not executing their strategies well enough due to a variety of reasons, perhaps one of them being that some Adept pushes/allins were quite easy to execute. Easy to execute to an extent that that alone made it deserving of a Patch.
While I agree that every player must do his/her best to improve your own game, ultimately I think the right call is to improve the game itself. If you improve yourself you ultimately improve your own game experience - but aiming for a better game design also accomplishes this, and likely even more so.
I would personally encourage anybody ranging from a skill level of that Snute described, but otherwise just anybody, to raise their concerns about Starcraft II if they are thought through and sincere. Mana´s posts, Nerchios posts and my posts or other proplayers thoughts about the game are all sincere, even if they are formulated with sarcasm, seriousness or bias. I think those who truly believe what they have to say is true should raise their concerns publicly so the rest of us can make a judgement call on whether it would be worse or better for the game.
If everybody at semi-professional or professional level to the fullest followed the guidelines provided in the OP, the game would be in a regressive state. Period. Some of the points made in defence of the notion in the OP sounds really Willy Wonka to me. I do not know what it means when some things are said like "it is more beautiful if players change the game rather than the developers" or the nostalgic comparisons to Brood War. Starcraft II is not Brood War, there should not be much of a surprise there. I never played Brood War, but it is obvious that this game had the tools to provide extermely mechanically gifted players with the opportunity to win games from as far behind as one could possibly imagine. Due to these differences in mechanics, players had more room to explore options to beat their opponents, thus a larger range of imbalance could be allowed. This would not be the case in a vast majority of instances in StarCraft II and an intervention would be required from the development team side. In fact, Terran is by far the most overpowered race. If you had an A.I to micro each individual marine, you would never lose. (At least In HotS, but my point stands.) The more superior mechanics/macro/micro are versus the other significant things that makes a StarCraft II player, the more imbalance/design flaws are acceptable.
To me there is compelling evidence that rational feedback/suggestions to improve the design of Starcraft II (and in some cases imbalance issues) have forwarded the game much more frequently than the opposite regardless of whether you are a GSL champion or top 100 GM on Europe. The key thing here is to improve the game, not fix the game. Even if there is a general consensus that an aspect of the game is fine - if you truly have evidence that there are improvements to be made, I would listen to it - and I would encourage everyone else to do so as well.
I do not see how you can not point out your concerns or good ideas to the community / Blizzard to put on the watch list while you do everything you can to improve your own game while also in this case doing everything you can to improve the actual game. Improving the game follows the commonly agreed regulations that they serve the greater good, including but not limited to skill, macro, diversity and playstyle rather than their each respective opposites.
Now to be fair, I think Nony makes some good points.
- Koreans does not necessarily through cultural aspects have any significant advantage over foreigners other than the ability to play on Korean Ladder. And unless you are top 5 GM on Europe, you probably will not benefit as much from Korean ladder as you would on Europe if at all. This depends on the target area you wish to improve for/against.
- There is a relatively large and easy tendency to have a flawed mindset and think that the game is at fault rather than yourself.
- It is possible to imagine yourself beating the best korean in the world. Not as a goal, but as a mindset. If you already put yourself in the shoes of realism and choose to only focus on Blizzcon, you are subconciously limiting yourself. And perhaps this is the entire point of the OP, to tell progamers to not limit themselves through clouding thoughts about improving the game.
I would however argue that even if that is even remotely true, you may still be capapble of saying some very good things about ways to improve the game, even if when doing so you hurt your own potential skill development in the game, it would still be for the greater good. However I am absolutely certain it is possible to share your fullest thoughts on the game while still doing your very best to improve, and this should be the official message.
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Remember when we bought a game and just played it And that sometimes we could download patches because the editor felt like it ? Now everyone wants to "Correct the game".
i'm sur Warcraft, Watcraft II, Starcraft, Brood War were good because the community chimmed in.
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On March 21 2016 09:57 showstealer1829 wrote:
On the one hand I agree with everything Nony said. But really why do they need to get good anymore? They have WCS Welfare. Who cares if the first round of Blizzcon will make the Lolbow fiasco look like the GSL Finals? Foreigners get their free money. Which seems to please a lot of people here.
I dont think it should be a Money thing (of course Progamers gotta live of a something) but i feel like it should be more about wanting to be the best Player in the world. Which leads us to the Mindset again:
On March 20 2016 07:14 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 06:53 Empirimancer wrote:
You're acting like criticizing the balance team and putting forth design ideas somehow takes significant time away from practice and therefore, if pros stop talking about balance, they'll get better at the game. That's silly.
It's a matter of mindset and attitude and focus. + Show Spoiler +On March 20 2016 06:50 Chubz wrote:if only you applied your own advice for yourself When I was good at BW, it never crossed my mind for a second that the rules of the game were going to be changed. When WCG or TSL or KeSPA announced the maps that we were gonna play on, we just accepted them and did what we could to maximize our chance to win. And to even think of Blizzard doing a balance patch would have been absurd. As for SC2, I did try to play both roles to some extent, as a "personality" who commented on things and as a player. I agree with you that this would have been good advice for me. But knowing personally how I was different at the time of my success in BW from how I was at the time of my failures in SC2, I'm sure that this advice would not have been enough to help me. It wasn't the main thing tripping me up. Is it the main thing tripping up some of the top talent right now? I don't think it's exactly it, but it's a symptom of the bad mindset of the scene, which definitely isn't competitive enough and is not right for getting everyone to play the best they can. Maybe staying focused on a problem-solving and winrate-improving mindset will help some players. Maybe having someone like me tell them they suck will spur them on to prove me wrong. Motivation works in weird ways. I'm sure someone wants to go outplay Zest and then bring this up, even though I'm nobody and it doesn't really matter that I doubted them.
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On March 21 2016 16:41 FFW_Rude wrote:
Remember when we bought a game and just played it And that sometimes we could download patches because the editor felt like it ? Now everyone wants to "Correct the game".
i'm sur Warcraft, Watcraft II, Starcraft, Brood War were good because the community chimmed in.
Yeah but that was also the era where they released games when they're done instead of when Activision wants to publish
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On March 20 2016 08:42 SoleSteeler wrote:
I lived and worked in Korea for 6 years. Koreans aren't genetically gifted or special. I am married to one!
I find they just work a lot harder and train smarter. They are also extremely competitive. It's easy for me to be critical of foreigners but there's really no reason they can't compete with the best if they put in the same amount of hours and properly focused effort as Koreans do. It almost feels like a mental block. Like they know they are at some big disadvantage already...
Yeah, I completely agree with this one.
Lets take a look at competitive LoL.
Koreans in Korea are doing really good. They're the best, they win the worlds since they came into the business.
But, they are challenged (sometimes greatly) by foreigner teams.
Now take a look at Koreans that left for China. Take a look at Mata, who even stated in an itw that he was training half a day in china, then just had free time (with a fucking lot of money to enjoy it on top of that), compared to the rigorous training conditions in Korea.
So what ?
Training conditions, coaching, and living the life of a progamer are the only thing that are different throughout the different regions of the worlds.
Not anything about being Korean or not or whatever.
EDIT : in fact it does lmao It just isn't about genetical material or so, it's just about hardworking and also, being in a country in which Esport MEANS actually smthg.
(I still acknowledge the fact that comparing LoL to BW/SC2 is a little bit biased, since the mechanical part of the game is not as important as in the previous two. You can be better on the laning phases and in the TFs (so, mechanically), and can still get steamrolled because you don't know how to play macro (rotations, vision, ...) HELLO CHINA !)
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On March 21 2016 11:33 phantomfive wrote:
The OP made me smile inside. I am not anywhere close to pro,
but now I feel inspired to go and play some Starcraft.
Word
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On March 21 2016 18:09 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 16:41 FFW_Rude wrote:
Remember when we bought a game and just played it And that sometimes we could download patches because the editor felt like it ? Now everyone wants to "Correct the game".
i'm sur Warcraft, Watcraft II, Starcraft, Brood War were good because the community chimmed in. Yeah but that was also the era where they released games when they're done instead of when Activision wants to publish
Well i agree but dont want to trade back to the old system we can make the game better on the fly
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ok, listen up, football team. it's time for the football games. to win at football you have to be good at football and play football really well. the other football team is really good, so you have to be even better to beat them. FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!!
that was my motivational speech, my fee is $4,000, thank you and goodnight
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On March 21 2016 18:09 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 16:41 FFW_Rude wrote:
Remember when we bought a game and just played it And that sometimes we could download patches because the editor felt like it ? Now everyone wants to "Correct the game".
i'm sur Warcraft, Watcraft II, Starcraft, Brood War were good because the community chimmed in. Yeah but that was also the era where they released games when they're done instead of when Activision wants to publish
Because you think it wasn't like that before ? Starcraft Brood War had to get out at a timed date. They rewrote the engine like 2 month before launch. Yes. It was already like that.
The only example of a "publish when it's really done" you could find would be Daikatana (talking about a game where investors just poured more and more money in until developement was complete). And that wasn't a pretty story.
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On March 21 2016 03:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 01:10 JeffKim wrote:On March 20 2016 13:08 TheEmulator wrote:On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better. Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog. Totally agreed. Anyone's capable of anything, region has nothing to do with it. It's about work ethic, the person's mentality towards the game, and dedication towards the game. Koreans are not genetically superior to non-Koreans to play an RTS game, despite the majority of people being under a similar impression. it would seem that pitching a baseball is the same. it has nothing to do with being American and speaking English. and it is an entirely individual pursuit. theoretically, any one can be the best baseball pitcher. long meandering story. + Show Spoiler +Let us imagine a french speaking guy living only a 3 hour drive north of the Boston Red Sox home park. and lets imagine this Canadian town is a french speaking hockey-town. and let's pretend our imaginary guy is named Eric Gagne.
He has only 1 path to becoming the best baseball pitcher on planet earth. Move South, learn english and surround himself with the best of the best in the baseball world. And these guys speak English and Spanish. They don't speak french.
THe probability of Eric Gagne reaching the levels he did by staying in Quebec is approximately zero.
His route to being #1 was tougher than any kid born in California in some town that produces Major League Baseball players by the dozen. But he wanted to be #1 so he did the extra work.
This is how region impacts competitive pursuits. Non-Koreans will have to do more work.. that's just the way it is. Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 03:21 BeStFAN wrote:
all the best chess players are from the Soviet Union I guess I need to move to Moscow and learn Russian because it's their primary mode of communication!!!
oh wait I'm Bobby Fischer and I can just study the game and SU games without having to be culturally indoctrinated
cmon dude LOL read story above. Some of that is implied because of cultural things mixed in with the closeness of things in Korea. The "1 path" thing is more cultural than it is situational to SC2. The entire idea of becoming a pro gamer in the US with the opportunities given compared to the educational and job system in Korea and the way that life works there are two different worlds, which is why people who are non-Korean feel somewhat different.
I kind of see your point, though.
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Pretty pointless post to be honest
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the point is quite clear though
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This is a "Thank you, Capitain Obvious" thread, mixed with the occasional insult and/or rough language in order to generate controversy.
Funny enough that the writer has won ZERO relevant tournaments during his peak at BW (at TSL2 were zero koreans participating), so he has no authority here.
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What is this thread even about. Avilo and Morrow thinking about the game?
It does not feel completed yet.
Terran:
Liberator is a band-aid for Terran for every match-up.
Cyclone ...well who gets those?
Choosing Mech= Choosing Turtle
TankyVac and Doomdraps raep your base randomly, with very litte you can do.
Zerg:
3 Larva inject is not ideal..but 4 would be too much.
Swarmhost and Infestor could be removed from the game, and nobody would notice. Seriously Blizzard was not liking the BL infestor and the SH Style. So both were nerfed hard. Take them out of the game.
Protoss
Oh my god.
Pylon cannon is a Bandaid for toss. Makes them almost invulnurable against Terran in the early game, offensive Pylons on the Ramps are a pain in the ass (why are those like they were 6 years ago..still=? Why isnt there some unbuildable plates and stuff?)
Adept-Stim is OP
Pickup-Range on WP is just Crazy. Medevacs take 1-2 seconds to slow down before pick up, and thats how you handle the AI?
If you do not want deathball games, REMOVE the Colussus. Remove it. not make it bad so nobody would use it, but with range and 3 Attack it deals good damage again..add the reaver.
Psystorms do not matter when you have 30 Reactored Rax on 6 bases.
But looks dank.
somehow the game is off. Many people feel like it is still not done yet. There are so many random things that still feel like beta.
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i think there is a big misunderstanding here. I wouldnt even describe the peepz nony refers to as pros. Its just a fancy word. The real pros are "professionals", thats where the word is derived from. I wouldnt know anyone outside Korea who qualifies being a real "pro" in Starcraft. Foreigners are lazy scrubs and all this talk about infrastructure is just a big excuse.
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8748 Posts
On March 22 2016 02:51 KT_Elwood wrote:
What is this thread even about. Avilo and Morrow thinking about the game?
It does not feel completed yet.
Terran:
Liberator is a band-aid for Terran for every match-up.
Cyclone ...well who gets those?
Choosing Mech= Choosing Turtle
TankyVac and Doomdraps raep your base randomly, with very litte you can do.
Zerg:
3 Larva inject is not ideal..but 4 would be too much.
Swarmhost and Infestor could be removed from the game, and nobody would notice. Seriously Blizzard was not liking the BL infestor and the SH Style. So both were nerfed hard. Take them out of the game.
Protoss
Oh my god.
Pylon cannon is a Bandaid for toss. Makes them almost invulnurable against Terran in the early game, offensive Pylons on the Ramps are a pain in the ass (why are those like they were 6 years ago..still=? Why isnt there some unbuildable plates and stuff?)
Adept-Stim is OP
Pickup-Range on WP is just Crazy. Medevacs take 1-2 seconds to slow down before pick up, and thats how you handle the AI?
If you do not want deathball games, REMOVE the Colussus. Remove it. not make it bad so nobody would use it, but with range and 3 Attack it deals good damage again..add the reaver.
Psystorms do not matter when you have 30 Reactored Rax on 6 bases.
But looks dank.
somehow the game is off. Many people feel like it is still not done yet. There are so many random things that still feel like beta.
Not at all what it's about. Let me paraphrase: In the game design process, the role of competitive players is to show what's possible. They don't need to say what's possible or say what they think is impossible. Just show what's possible. No one else can do that better than them because they're the best at playing the game. And they do that naturally by doing their jobs well. So they should just do their jobs and they're simultaneously making significant and unique contributions to game design.
Beyond that, I'm making two more points. The first is that their concern about game design signifies a concern about the health of the scene as a whole. If they want to do the most good they can for the scene, then they should reconsider their priorities. Again, they can help the scene the most by doing their jobs well. Get better at the game, close the gap with the top Koreans. Better play will be more fun to watch and better results against the Koreans will be more fun to watch. The game is not that bad. Progamers can produce competitive and entertaining games from the game this very moment.
My last point is that it is difficult to be a competitive player and think about game design simultaneously. Focus and mindset are two very tricky things and I think many of the best non-Korean players can improve a lot in these areas. They should consider simplifying their relationship with the game to only focus on self-improvement. Don't think about the game in any other way. These thought experiments about "what if these changes were made..." are a distraction and can be disruptive to a competitive mindset.
Thus progamers should stop commenting on game design. If Blizzard asks them, then cooperate and answer their questions and then forget about it, like how a pro athlete answers questions from the media.
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
On March 22 2016 02:45 Apoteosis wrote:
This is a "Thank you, Capitain Obvious" thread, mixed with the occasional insult and/or rough language in order to generate controversy.
Funny enough that the writer has won ZERO relevant tournaments during his peak at BW (at TSL2 were zero koreans participating), so he has no authority here.
Tournaments relevant to what exactly? When I was a top non-Korean player, I kept improving. I was steadily climbing the ranks of the Korean players until the day I quit playing BW. When I committed to TSL2, I had not played BW for eight months. I had quit and I decided to make an exception and come back part-time to prepare for TSL2. The top players now have stagnated.
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On March 21 2016 03:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 01:10 JeffKim wrote:On March 20 2016 13:08 TheEmulator wrote:On March 20 2016 11:55 BeStFAN wrote:On March 20 2016 11:46 PtitDrogo wrote:
Honestly I feel insulted.
I fucking knows korean are better than me, I worship these guys and would suck their dicks to have half their game knowledge and experience. I know strategies are changing and I'm working 24/7 to try to be decent at the game (and failing miserably I know ).
You're telling me to Get Good ? Why good thing you're here tyler now I know what to do !
I really hate the fact that you're surfing on the "foreigners are bad and lazy they whine all the time lololol" wave. I thought that as a experienced pro gamer yourself you would know better.
Koreans do whine themselves ( A LOT) you know, except they're better than us so I guess it's ok for them to do so. read carefully into his post It's not just about trying to be competitive with the Korean players. His main point is: don't waste mental energy complaining; he's also implying that you shouldn't be using "the game isn't optimal enough for me (how i play what i play)" as a line of reasoning as a professional player. Instead: focus on improvement++ But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene. This is following the main point; He's not saying: you need to be more korean you need to not be a foreigner. He's saying: Use beating Koreans as a benchmark for your improvement. If the scene as a whole focuses on getting better then it follows that there will be more foreigner vs korean upsets. But that's not his main point. It's: improve. If you're a progamer then you need to be constantly trying to get better. Also important to note he's probably not referring to every single foreign player, so if you are trying your best there's no need to get insulted by his blog. Totally agreed. Anyone's capable of anything, region has nothing to do with it. It's about work ethic, the person's mentality towards the game, and dedication towards the game. Koreans are not genetically superior to non-Koreans to play an RTS game, despite the majority of people being under a similar impression. it would seem that pitching a baseball is the same. it has nothing to do with being American and speaking English. and it is an entirely individual pursuit. theoretically, any one can be the best baseball pitcher. long meandering story. + Show Spoiler +Let us imagine a french speaking guy living only a 3 hour drive north of the Boston Red Sox home park. and lets imagine this Canadian town is a french speaking hockey-town. and let's pretend our imaginary guy is named Eric Gagne.
He has only 1 path to becoming the best baseball pitcher on planet earth. Move South, learn english and surround himself with the best of the best in the baseball world. And these guys speak English and Spanish. They don't speak french.
THe probability of Eric Gagne reaching the levels he did by staying in Quebec is approximately zero.
His route to being #1 was tougher than any kid born in California in some town that produces Major League Baseball players by the dozen. But he wanted to be #1 so he did the extra work.
This is how region impacts competitive pursuits. Non-Koreans will have to do more work.. that's just the way it is. Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 03:21 BeStFAN wrote:
all the best chess players are from the Soviet Union I guess I need to move to Moscow and learn Russian because it's their primary mode of communication!!!
oh wait I'm Bobby Fischer and I can just study the game and SU games without having to be culturally indoctrinated
cmon dude LOL read story above.
yo JJR
you knew Eric Gagne became good when he got on steroids right? And that he was born in a city with a MLB franchise?
Guillaume Patry went to Korea because he was fuckn good at starcraft in the first place. Not to become good by training in Korea.
You dont have the monopoly on truth you know...
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[B]On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history.
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On March 22 2016 09:17 MyLovelyLurker wrote:Show nested quote +[B]On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history.
I think you misread my post as I didn't say they brought no value whatsoever.
There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start. Providing interesting discussion on a forum is of such low value and importance relative to this... I'm sorry that it'd be something you miss, but hopefully the improvement of the games would be worth the diminishing of the forums.
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On March 22 2016 09:23 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2016 09:17 MyLovelyLurker wrote:[B]On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history. I think you misread my post as I didn't say they brought no value whatsoever. There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start.
The quote highlighted explicitly above states you think they bring little value, at best, in a hypothetical scenario that may or may not be realized. Let's not argue semantics and epsilon over zero, shall we. As I said, I do have respect for you and believe you do, to some extent, have a point - but I simply ponder if as always it's not down to the execution ? Balance whining and cathartic hyperbole can all be done in good fun, with a hint of sarcasm, and taken into a wider, strategic context.
Besides, the incremental time gained for a pro-gamer from NOT writing a twenty liner post on TL is not going to win them Blizzcon either. Lacking an internal locus of control - the idea they have nobody to blame but themselves for not being at the top of their race - will.
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On March 22 2016 09:23 NonY wrote:
There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start. Providing interesting discussion on a forum is of such low value and importance relative to this... I'm sorry that it'd be something you miss, but hopefully the improvement of the games would be worth the diminishing of the forums.[
This is true - neither do I have an answer, sadly. Couple more points :
- Can we agree the current European foreigner scene largely eschews your critic, and it might be more of an NA thing ? Hard not to view it as an ad hominem. As I said, if Snute, MLord, or Nerchio, who are going toe-to-toe with Koreans, balance whine, I think they should be given benefit of the doubt.
- Just playing devil's advocate here, as they clearly have the better work ethic. But as a counter-example, Koreans DO balance whine. Bomber himself switched races to Protoss, joined a team named [Adept], etc. I think it's healthy to let frustration off when you care that much.
I fully agree that I wouldn't miss too much average Joe going '[X] race imba !' up here.
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On March 22 2016 09:23 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2016 09:17 MyLovelyLurker wrote:[B]On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history. I think you misread my post as I didn't say they brought no value whatsoever. There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start. Providing interesting discussion on a forum is of such low value and importance relative to this... I'm sorry that it'd be something you miss, but hopefully the improvement of the games would be worth the diminishing of the forums.
While I think it is true that some progamers suffers from a biased mentality, and while it is true that progamers should yearn to improve at the same rate or better than the koreans, I think it is flawed to suggest that the answer is to not at all provide valuable feedback to the game developers through the assumption that it is impossible to avoid the distraction of thinking of a better game design. I would be the first to admit that in my case, my mentality is often flawed. But provided with the right tools to find ways to see through your frustrations, both in terms of improving yourself rather than blaming the game, but also how to think of and present ideas to improve game design. In reality I think the best option is to proceed to improve your ability to give your very best at developing your skills in the game while also using your player experience to think hard on ways to improve game design. Doing this seperately is the true show of a consistently strong mentality rather than thinking these go hand in hand, outbalancing one another.
For example, what I would say to progamers is to never think of aspects of the game negatively. Instead of saying that Lurkers/Liberators/Disruptors are OP and should be nerfed, you say: "I think there are ways to improve this area of the game by changing A and B." - Though this is more complicated than it sounds.
I would set aside your progaming shoes when describing your ideas and instead look at it from the developing perspective. You think of ways to improve the game design and present those ideas to the community rather than thinking you are trying to better your own position in the game or you are frustrated with issues. The idea should be to forward the game with progressive ideas rather than complain about the game with a regressive state of mind. And the latter does not only apply to bad ideas for game design improvement, it also regresses the game development to have not the very best players think about ways to improve the game they love.
I spent a lot of time thinking about PvP and ways to improve it since I did recognize my own frustrations and issues with the matchup, but when I really want to change something, I transcend into a different state of mind. We decided that changing the Oracle from Light to Armored checks many things on the list of presumed Blizzard design regulations: It is simple, does not affect other matchups, is not "too creative" etc. Here you told us that you were certain that mistakes are made in either the phoenix vs phoenix case or the oracle vs ground case. While mistakes are important, we must always remember that while we could technically correct mistakes and through very strong (some would say perfect) execution actually secure ourselves a good position with ground vs oracle, the oracle player may also correct his/her mistakes, and perhaps that only happens when some players, despite all odds, consistently gets even or ahead versus oracle - though I believe this will not happen with the current PvP design, and like Snute said, a lot of tournament games and time can be saved by simply doing the change we suggested that indeniably makes the matchup as good as before or better, and this is absolutely key in this context.
Oracles would perform better versus Phoenixes with armored tag, and since they warp from the same structure, the interaction would almost certainly improve.
It is my belief that Oracles perform, oh christ the percentages, +/- 15% better than ground. By allowing 2 stalkers to roughly perform 1/4 more of needed-to-kill shots as 3 stalkers, I would almost dare say the reasoning here does not stand more explicitly.
The Oracle from light to armored idea will ultimately improve PvP with little to no impact on other matchups.
And while you could always correct mistakes or find ways to improve your position with ground against oracle, with oracle against phoenix, with phoenix against phoenix, just remember it is a neverending continuum of whoever corrects his or her mistakes the most, and it is my prediction that the oracle player, mathemathically, always has the upper hand versus ground, and if there is a general consensus amongst protoss progamers that this issue does exist, and if the proposed change of changing oracle from light to armored almost certainly will improve the matchup and at worst not do anything negative, then the case is compelling to take action towards this or something similar.
A fear I have now, personally, is that when Zerg, likely justifiably, has been sufficiently nerfed on their earlygame timing/allin strength and Protoss starts winning to the extent that they would be considered OP, Blizzard starts to revert changes when in fact they should buff Zerg lategame instead. I absolutely want to stirr the PvZ balance discourse towards this direction before it is too late, and if progamers does not speak on such things, then perhaps the developers may oversee the higher value in buffing the lategame of Zerg and instead regress back to where things where roughly stabile.
P.S. I would not be so sure to say that Koreans are only focused on improving and not at all thinking about ways to improve starcraft 2, though I do think many players would rather see flaws rather than opportunities to help the game grow.
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On March 20 2016 14:04 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 13:21 HyDrA_solic wrote:On March 20 2016 13:04 avilo wrote:
Imo there should be a balance. I do not think it's wrong for progamers to comment on balance/design when, for example, right now we are seeing games where ravagers are literally being spammed 100% in almost every match-up, or things like mech being completely killed in LOTV.
I mean, i 100% agree with Nony's OP if this were brood war. But it's not...and that's because brood war was almost perfectly balanced. With LOTV...you have stuff like an invulnerable nydus worm in the game...in my opinion when there are things like this that are unhealthy for the gameplay for pros and joes and viewers alike...people need to speak up and get blizzard to get that out of the game or tweak it.
SC2 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay different from Brood War...there are many things in SC2 that are absurdly broken in one way or another that are left alone for months at a time, and no, there will never be "progamer solutions" to those because they are fundamentally broken game mechanics (mass air, invincible nydus, current ravager stats, etc.)
I mean, blizzard basically patches so little already...if anything most of the SC2 community should be asking for more patches. It just boils down to SC2 is a way different game than BW and no where near as balanced.
If we all wanna "let the pros figure it out" then GL having 0% mech games for the entire rest of SC2's lifetime after blizzard already made changes to kill mech.
Do you realize the time that BW took to balance? Even then Koreans were better. Always will be better. Why? They blame balance too, they're humans too. However, their way of effort, to get the job done, is way different than us foreigners. I'll take you for example, you constantly whine and whine about balance in your stream, yet I do not see you changing your playstyle 1 bit. I always like to use the example: Hey, if (KR Terran Progamer) was in my position, would he lose? Or would he say with 100% that everything that beats us is imba, and it's blizzard fault? LotV is still fresh (BW and SC2 wise) and we cannot tolerate major changes to a game this fresh. I see ravagers, I see ravagers getting beat down. The game is still evolving, and there are major aspects we're still missing. No one knew in the early days of WoL how imba BL+infestor was. No one knew in early HotS how boring Swarm Hosts would become. Just try new stuff, practice harder, think! After all, this is a strategy game, so strategy should be involved, somehow. BW had only ONE huge balance pass which was patch 1.08 iirc and after that nothing else was ever changed and the game happened to be perfectly balanced whether by luck or the designers were very competent. After that patch, it was all on players/maps, but there was nothing blatantly bad balance wise.
Yet statistically Sc2 is actually more balanced
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On March 22 2016 09:35 MyLovelyLurker wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2016 09:23 NonY wrote:On March 22 2016 09:17 MyLovelyLurker wrote:On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history. I think you misread my post as I didn't say they brought no value whatsoever. There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start. The quote highlighted explicitly above states you think they bring little value, at best, in a hypothetical scenario that may or may not be realized. Let's not argue semantics and epsilon over zero, shall we. As I said, I do have respect for you and believe you do, to some extent, have a point - but I simply ponder if as always it's not down to the execution ? Balance whining and cathartic hyperbole can all be done in good fun, with a hint of sarcasm, and taken into a wider, strategic context. Besides, the incremental time gained for a pro-gamer from NOT writing a twenty liner post on TL is not going to win them Blizzcon either. Lacking an internal locus of control - the idea they have nobody to blame but themselves for not being at the top of their race - will.
It's not even a matter of arguing semantics. There's some amount of value there and I judge it to not be large enough while you judge it to be large enough. I dismissed that value and you responded to that dismissal by saying that I didn't recognize that there's any value at all and then proceeded to say that the value is significant. If you want to state that you think the value is significant then you can simply state that opinion without misrepresenting me and then saying that my correction of your paraphrasing is just semantics.
I'm not sure what the point is of defending the actions and mindsets of the players. Anything is possible. One guy can thrive while talking shit, another can thrive while whining, another can thrive while remaining silent, another can thrive while engaging in social media, etc. All of that external stuff can be quantified by the amount of minutes it takes from a player's attention and then we can clearly see that they have plenty of minutes remaining to do their jobs.
-Can we agree the current European foreigner scene largely eschews your critic, and it might be more of an NA thing ? Hard not to view it as an ad hominem. As I said, if Snute, MLord, or Nerchio, who are going toe-to-toe with Koreans, balance whine, I think they should be given benefit of the doubt.
Toe-to-toe? No, not nearly as good. Nowhere close. I guess that's another thing we'll have to agree to disagree. If you want to bet your life on MLord beating Zest, TY, Dark, Solar, etc, when the conditions are fair and the Koreans actually care about winning, then I think you are nuts. It is nowhere near even. In a bo7, those Korean players win 95%+ of the time I think.
I think it's possible that a player can flourish while doing a whole bunch of stuff. One guy might love talking shit while another would be really uncomfortable with it. One guy loves engaging with fans on social media while another guy gets torn down by the haters. A player might be unable to ignore the imbalances and poor game design he perceives in the game so he has to write huge posts about those thoughts to vent, and then the next practice session he's able to focus on self-improvement again.
It's hard to give general advice because different things work for different people. But as a whole, it's clear that the status quo is bad. Personally I would not even feel comfortable trying to object to anything my blog said without having my own suggestion on how to improve the situation. I think it's easy to "defend" the players from my "attacks" but there's no denying that there's a problem. If my advice is ineffective then something still needs to change.
On March 22 2016 11:06 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
For example, what I would say to progamers is to never think of aspects of the game negatively. Instead of saying that Lurkers/Liberators/Disruptors are OP and should be nerfed, you say: "I think there are ways to improve this area of the game by changing A and B." - Though this is more complicated than it sounds.
This is such an unbelievable waste of time and effort while players are getting outclassed by Koreans. I can't even fathom how you could think that this is a good use of our most talented players. If I had a 70% win rate against someone and I saw he was writing posts on forums about how the way that I beat him is unfair, while my buddy who plays the same race goes 50/50 with me, I'd just be laughing my ass off. When a player thinks something is OP, it simply goes higher on their priority of things to learn how to beat. It's hard enough figuring out how to beat something, but you want the best non-Korean minds to split their energy into creating a better version of SC? They've got no game design experience. The only authority they have is how good they are at the game but they're second class. Despite all that they could still contribute something but they have more important things to do!! And they'll likely contribute something anyway in the games they'll show.
[B]On March 22 2016 11:06 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
P.S. I would not be so sure to say that Koreans are only focused on improving and not at all thinking about ways to improve starcraft 2, though I do think many players would rather see flaws rather than opportunities to help the game grow.
I never said Koreans are only focused on improving. It doesn't matter what the Koreans are doing. Non-Koreans have to figure out what will work for them. Mimicking Koreans is one route but not necessarily a good one. Assuming that anything a Korean does must be an okay thing to do is definitely a trap.
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On March 20 2016 07:39 Teoita wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 07:36 Granas1 wrote:
Sry nony but first: doing suggestions about the game has nothing to do with them beeing bad. The game needs to improve either way. With or without foreigner winning.
Also I think its kinda insulting since you are not a pro anymore, nor did i see you on one of the tournaments I've watched in the last weeks. So what gives you the right to insult other people that they are not doing there job correctly, that you decided to give up on? Nony isn't being insulting at all imo, he's just saying "rather than focusing on suggesting changes to units and maps in a game that isn't close to being understood or figured out, practice first and foremost, and only bring up suggestions later", which i agree with.
~_~ "Get good" is extremely insulting in video games, do you even play video games?
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On March 22 2016 14:00 NonY wrote:
This is such an unbelievable waste of time and effort while players are getting outclassed by Koreans. I can't even fathom how you could think that this is a good use of our most talented players. If I had a 70% win rate against someone and I saw he was writing posts on forums about how the way that I beat him is unfair, while my buddy who plays the same race goes 50/50 with me, I'd just be laughing my ass off. When a player thinks something is OP, it simply goes higher on their priority of things to learn how to beat. It's hard enough figuring out how to beat something, but you want the best non-Korean minds to split their energy into creating a better version of SC? They've got no game design experience. The only authority they have is how good they are at the game but they're second class. Despite all that they could still contribute something but they have more important things to do!! And they'll likely contribute something anyway in the games they'll show.
Feel free to correct me on any misunderstandings.
You seem very fixated on the fact that foreigners are performing as well as Koreans, and that totally misses the point. There can be many reasons why foreigners are not as good as Koreans, everything from practice environment, lack of mechanics and so forth. The question of balance or better game design is just one out of many factors determining whether you can win or not. Honestly I would consider such a fixation a mental issue as well, even more so in this context when presenting the case utterly attached to the concept of winning and losing. I do not think any sincere person goes to the forums and whines about how he lost to X strategy and claims it is unfair. Nobody is saying here either that there has to be something to complain about in order to come up with ideas.
Not all progamers shares their thoughts because they are losing. You are painting this with an incredibly broad brush as if you assume all progamers talking about balance / game design who are not in a Kespa team have nothing to say what so ever. To me it is clear that if you have a solid understanding about StarCraft II on a theoretical level the chances that your thoughts ought to be valued are extremely high. These skills will require to some extent experience and the ability to comprehend mechanics/strategy and basics of game design on multiple levels.
My point was never that people should somehow surpress their feelings about something being OP. I definitely feel some things when I play, and I am absolutely certain, as you conceded as well, that Koreans also have similar emotions. The point is to not let these emotions cloud your judgement on ideas on how to improve the design/balance of the game - however - even if you have emotional attachement to your ideas on how to advance the game, if these ideas are good, your intentions does not matter as much. The ideas matter.
Your message to progamers, frankly, is almost definitively invoking player censorship, and if I would be more frustrated with silence and lack of audience on solid ideas rather than my ability to get better at StarCraft II. It is a delusion to think that it is a distraction to talk about the game and find things you think can be improved on while also doing your best to get better. At worst you spend time on it when done correctly.
Good ideas can help progress the game to a better state regardless of whomever the idea originated from and regardless whether said person can beat Koreans or not.
On March 22 2016 14:00 NonY wrote:
I never said Koreans are only focused on improving. It doesn't matter what the Koreans are doing. Non-Koreans have to figure out what will work for them. Mimicking Koreans is one route but not necessarily a good one. Assuming that anything a Korean does must be an okay thing to do is definitely a trap.
You points just seem to come off pinpointing at Koreans on their pedestal, saying how as long as Koreans are better/winning more than foreigners it is a waste of time to think about how the game could be better, though contradicting to what you said later.
I rest my case.
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How long did it take Kespa Koreans to become better than most top foreigners, once switching from BW to SC 2? An embarrassingly short amount of time. That's pretty much all you need to know to realize they're always going to be better. The skill they've built in BW has transferred over well. Fundamentally they're way better. For instance the hotkey usage of non Koreans is bronze league, Christ. I think I remember Nony saying when he went to Korea (in BW) that they forced him to use F Keys. It blew my mind that he didn't already do so. Foreigners put 0 effort into attempting to play optimally.
No effort into common sense optimal things. And, god knows what they're missing out on that it would take a Korean team/coach to point out for them. Then you have to factor in Koreans have teams, with practice partners, where they practice amongst each other for 14 hours a day or however long. That's a deck stacked against them far more than D Kim could do via balance changes.
This game makes 0 sense to play. The game gives no chances for new players. Most of the pros now are the very first ones to play SC 2, who were lucky enough to get on good teams. Chances that the select few of lucky players are talented enough to compete with Koreans, even if conditions were similar? Slim... or no reason has been given to believe differently.
Without a form of revenue sharing, players who might possess the talent (if any) are going to realize the deal with SC 2, the lack money and realistic chances, and just gravitate elsewhere. It makes sense for foreigners to just worry about competing amongst each other and trying to lobby for their race to either become more balanced or stay OP.
Saying the game is dying is a euphemism. I'm surprised more pros don't spend 80% of their time trying to think of ways for Blizzard to rejuvenate their game, so there actually is a thing called "pro SC 2 gamers" in the future. Guys need to take a break...
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What exactly is Nonys job right now?
If it is not "reminding progamers what to do", then this blog is contradicting itself.
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On March 22 2016 19:31 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
You points just seem to come off pinpointing at Koreans on their pedestal, saying how as long as Koreans are better/winning more than foreigners it is a waste of time to think about how the game could be better, though contradicting to what you said later.
It is not a complete waste of time but it is an inefficient use of a progamer's talents. I've said it many times to many people in this thread already but my belief is that progamers make an extremely significant contribution to the development of the game simply by being good at the game and showing what's possible. Virtually nothing the non-Koreans show in their games is actually valid "feedback" because they're not the best! Non-Koreans shouldn't want the game designed around how Masters players play, and neither should anyone want the game designed around non-Korean play when the Koreans are better still. If these players have a passion for improving the game, they can offer ideas theoretically without any authority, or they can prove their ideas in their games by playing at the highest level. The latter is so much better and considering it's their job to do so anyway, why not improve both things at once? And putting game design in perspective for a moment, progamers have a better chance of doing more good overall for the scene by becoming better players. And in a happy coincidence, they're also becoming better contributors to the game design process. Win/win.
The problem is figuring out how to actually get better. It's not as simple as "instead of making this post on game design today, I'm going to get as good as Dark." I don't know what players need to change. But something HAS to change. We can't all, as a community, keep acting like it's fine that Korea is a league ahead of the rest of the world. We can't just accept it. I don't care that you can imagine a progamer being successful while still giving game design feedback. I can do it too. I still made this blog.
Maybe instead of having a passion for game design, these players should become passionate about how to improve. They should make more posts like this blog, saying what they need to do or think differently to get better. For all the objections to my advice in this thread, hardly anyone offers advice or solutions of their own, and yet no one can deny that Koreans are much better players. They just want to defend the thing I said should be changed because they like that thing. It's not an honest attempt at doing what's best for everyone. I have personally participated in plenty of game design discussions and I'm happy to read a non-Korean progamer's opinion but I have no problem letting it go.
On March 22 2016 19:31 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
You seem very fixated on the fact that foreigners are performing as well as Koreans, and that totally misses the point. There can be many reasons why foreigners are not as good as Koreans, everything from practice environment, lack of mechanics and so forth. The question of balance or better game design is just one out of many factors determining whether you can win or not.
Yeah so let's start on this project. The weakest link is the non-Korean's skill, not the gameplay. I don't know why so few players have been able to close the gap, and when they do why it's brief and limited. There are people who are working on trying to find answers to these questions. This is the project that should be at the forefront of our community.
On March 22 2016 19:31 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
Good ideas can help progress the game to a better state regardless of whomever the idea originated from and regardless whether said person can beat Koreans or not.
True. So why is it that we encourage the players who are supposed to be trying to beat Koreans to instead become part-time game developers? Players of any skill level can contribute to game design. But it's only the most talented players, the top non-Korean progamers, who have a shot at beating Koreans. Let's support them in their effort to beat Koreans and not encourage them to do something that someone of any skill level can do.
On March 22 2016 19:59 graNite wrote:
What exactly is Nonys job right now?
If it is not "reminding progamers what to do", then this blog is contradicting itself.
I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough in explaining the basic logic here. There's an assumption that anyone who is flourishing is not under any scrutiny. But once you are not flourishing, you are under scrutiny. If the people who are affected by my job feel that I'm underperforming, then I would be happy for their advice on how to improve. It doesn't matter what my job is. It only matters if I'm doing it well enough. And even then, it only matters to the people it affects.
I'm affected by how well non-Korean players do their job and they're not doing it as well as the Koreans. None of them are forced to read my blog. The title is descriptive enough that they could immediately decide to not click if they don't want to hear me telling them what to do.
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To everyone:
I'm done replying to comments. It's gotten very repetitive. If you have a comment, I suggest reading the entire thread to see if it was already expressed and if I already responded to it.
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It is the job of the progamers to balance whine.
Balance whine is directly and indirectly relating to the income of pros. You can train 1000s of hours to "get gud", but balance whining doesnt take you more then 5 mins - 2hours, depending on how much effort you put into it. But 1000 hours of "getting gud" can make a much smaller effort to your income as a player then one single patch from Blizzard, that changes the game the way you want, gives you a much bigger edge and thus a better income.
Thats also why I cant blame Rain for his infamous balance states in 2014 during the blink-all-in era. It is his job to whine some minutes on stage or one hour ina community forum, delaying or forcing patches by balance whining (or at least have an impact on blizzards patch policy) will give much greater return of time investing then grinding training games. One patch or missing patch makes alot of income, much more then 2 weeks of training. And all you need to do is balance whine here and there.
Take for example Brofestor. It took arround 8 months (or longer?) to patch a clear OP strategy out of the game. The patch (or rather HotS itself) which got rid of Brofestor had more affect on income of all players then the hardcore training of 8 month before. Rising Patchzergs made alot more money by telling the world that Brofestor is not OP to Blizzard then by training Brofestor, Terrans and Protoss made more money by whining for a massive nerf and then start winning again then by training against a clear OP strategy they had no way to adept or "get gud" against.
The same goes for todays Protoss. Protoss sits on these maps now since the beta and is playing these maps for money since LotV launch. All they got from "getting gud" was the patch that nerfed protoss. Protoss players got a clear hit in income from the map-pool and the 3 55-60% winrate maps. 1 hour of whining each week till finally the mappool gets patched will bring a much better return of time investet then 1 hour of more training each week.
These players are not just some grinders who play SC II in their free time, they do it for the money. And it would be stupid for them to not try to max out their profits from their job. And guess what, lobbying for patches brings more return then grinding games and "getting gud".
And now a personal attack:
It is super ironic that a player who never "got gud" enough to play agains koreans and who won his only major competition in a tournament without koreans is now attacking the foreigners who cant win against koreans on major stages. The very same person that wasnt able to do the same is now attacking a new generation of foreigners who, after 10 years of "getting gud" did not work out, use lobbying and whining as a new approach.
"I'm affected by how well non-Korean players do their job and they're not doing it as well as the Koreans."
The same could be said about the thread OP and makes his statements even more..., i am not going the Redeye way... strange.
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@Clonester ya just don't get it, do you?
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On March 22 2016 14:00 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
OK well first allow me to be super confused at your logic because quoting you from this thread, it's about time :
All of that external stuff can be quantified by the amount of minutes it takes from a player's attention and then we can clearly see that they have plenty of minutes remaining to do their jobs.
Earlier in this thread :
Already said it's not about time but rather how a player thinks about a game.
Just being facetious here, but worth checking consistency of arguments.
Also, there is quite some nerve in titling a post 'Progamers do your job' with a strong-armed ending, and making sweeping generalisations over their behaviour, whilst then admitting that
I'm not sure what the point is of defending the actions and mindsets of the players. Anything is possible. One guy can thrive while talking shit, another can thrive while whining, another can thrive while remaining silent, another can thrive while engaging in social media, etc.
In which case, surely it is pretty pointless to advise them regarding their actions and mindsets as well ?
Finally :
This is such an unbelievable waste of time and effort while players are getting outclassed by Koreans. I can't even fathom how you could think that this is a good use of our most talented players.
I think surely you jest at this point ? I'm not a fan of LiquidMana's balance post - but I can't believe he would have spent more than an hour writing it. You can't tell us with a straight face that had he spent that hour on three more practice games, you would have expected him to 5-0 Rogue. Yes, that time would have been better invested, yes, he would have been ever so slightly more focused, but no, it would not have made any material difference, in the grand scheme of things. It is just that : a small waste of time. And it will become increasingly whiny and immature as the game settles, for sure.
I rest my case on pure logic. I do not want to sound hostile at all - consistency of logic is important to the debate, and you bring extremely important points to the table. Some of them are uncomfortable truths.
On Koreans vs top foreigners : Snute 2-4 Polt, Nerchio 2-3 sOs. Yes they lose the series and yes you could argue those two are not the hottest TY-Zest-Dark-Maru top brass of the moment, but those are tight series in my book. Nerchio's ELO 6 points less than Innovation's or Zest's ! Yes ELO is flawed and yes there definitely is a skill gap, but I'm not gonna be the guy telling Nerchio to work more ( or kiss goodbye to his life, to go to Korea and take that Code S spot - that's a personal and economic decision ). You rightly ask what can we do to lift him up to Dark's level ? A commendable goal if there ever was one, but I believe there might be little actionable insights - emulation, the presence of a scene, is probably what we need, like what you are beginning to see in France.
In general I think you are asking the right - and hard - question, which is, how does one raise to the absolute top of their game ? How does one become a world champion ? How do we ignite the e-sports movement in one country ?
On March 22 2016 19:31 TheoMikkelsen wrote:
You seem very fixated on the fact that foreigners are performing as well as Koreans, and that totally misses the point. There can be many reasons why foreigners are not as good as Koreans, everything from practice environment, lack of mechanics and so forth. The question of balance or better game design is just one out of many factors determining whether you can win or not.
Yeah so let's start on this project. The weakest link is the non-Korean's skill, not the gameplay. I don't know why so few players have been able to close the gap, and when they do why it's brief and limited. There are people who are working on trying to find answers to these questions. This is the project that should be at the forefront of our community.
Yes and yes.
As a recommendation, and since I think it's about the environment, let's do this thought experiment : put the top 20 Euro and NA foreigners in a common practice house in London, Paris, or Berlin, and have them play each other pretty much daily, in front of a coach who is grading them. Rinse and repeat for 6 months. What is your expectation of how much the skill gap to Korean would have narrowed then ? Do you not think that team would have fair odds against a mid-level Proleague team ? I do. I think the environment would strongly encourage them to increase locus of control and sense of agency there.
If your point then becomes that the more discipline and focus in that house, the better, then let's shake hands and say fully agreed.
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On March 23 2016 00:26 Clonester wrote:
It is the job of the progamers to balance whine.
Balance whine is directly and indirectly relating to the income of pros. You can train 1000s of hours to "get gud", but balance whining doesnt take you more then 5 mins - 2hours, depending on how much effort you put into it. But 1000 hours of "getting gud" can make a much smaller effort to your income as a player then one single patch from Blizzard, that changes the game the way you want, gives you a much bigger edge and thus a better income.
Thats also why I cant blame Rain for his infamous balance states in 2014 during the blink-all-in era. It is his job to whine some minutes on stage or one hour ina community forum, delaying or forcing patches by balance whining (or at least have an impact on blizzards patch policy) will give much greater return of time investing then grinding training games. One patch or missing patch makes alot of income, much more then 2 weeks of training. And all you need to do is balance whine here and there.
Take for example Brofestor. It took arround 8 months (or longer?) to patch a clear OP strategy out of the game. The patch (or rather HotS itself) which got rid of Brofestor had more affect on income of all players then the hardcore training of 8 month before. Rising Patchzergs made alot more money by telling the world that Brofestor is not OP to Blizzard then by training Brofestor, Terrans and Protoss made more money by whining for a massive nerf and then start winning again then by training against a clear OP strategy they had no way to adept or "get gud" against.
The same goes for todays Protoss. Protoss sits on these maps now since the beta and is playing these maps for money since LotV launch. All they got from "getting gud" was the patch that nerfed protoss. Protoss players got a clear hit in income from the map-pool and the 3 55-60% winrate maps. 1 hour of whining each week till finally the mappool gets patched will bring a much better return of time investet then 1 hour of more training each week.
These players are not just some grinders who play SC II in their free time, they do it for the money. And it would be stupid for them to not try to max out their profits from their job. And guess what, lobbying for patches brings more return then grinding games and "getting gud".
And now a personal attack:
It is super ironic that a player who never "got gud" enough to play agains koreans and who won his only major competition in a tournament without koreans is now attacking the foreigners who cant win against koreans on major stages. The very same person that wasnt able to do the same is now attacking a new generation of foreigners who, after 10 years of "getting gud" did not work out, use lobbying and whining as a new approach.
"I'm affected by how well non-Korean players do their job and they're not doing it as well as the Koreans."
The same could be said about the thread OP and makes his statements even more..., i am not going the Redeye way... strange.
That's a very, very unhealthy attitude for the scene as a whole, though. Which is precisely the problem. If progamers are incentivized to balance whine rather than getting better at the game and showing entertaining games and strategies, entertainment value suffers, the mindset of players and the community suffers, the level of competition suffers, the integrity of competition suffers, and the scene takes a huge hit. It's very important to avoid that kind of situation. If there are things that make the incentive structure of the scene this way, then they need to change, or progamers need to learn to overcome them. It's as simple as that.
Basically, after following the scene for this wrong, I think the basic part of what NonY is saying--that mindset is one of the biggest problems in foreign SC2 among players and the community--is almost self-evidently correct. Fixing it is obviously harder, though.
Also, I'm karking sick and tired of ignorant people coming into this thread and shitting on Nony's record. This is a man who, in an era where there essentially was no foreign scene at all, where the prospects for a foreigner making any real money off the game were basically nil, was so committed to the game and getting better at it that he moved to Korea, moved into a team-house, and steadily worked his way up the ranks to the point of beating Koreans. As an accomplishment, that's something much harder than anything any SC2 foreign pro has ever done, and it shows a level of commitment to self-improvement that's considerable.
That he ended up retiring from the scene to get married is his own business. And that that he didn't do great in SC2, because he was suffering from clinical depression, is also his own business.
So, yes, he didn't do well in SC2 while dealing with a competitive handicap bigger than most people can imagine. But the bottom line is that if Nony doesn't have the background and the right to say what he's saying, no one does.
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France12880 Posts
I don't see why you would need to become better players to talk about design.
ByuN is one of the best koreans, yet he got f*cked by very bad design (Ulrena and the tempest build in PvT), thing that was shown already in foreigner games.
If it stresses you out that foreign pros post things about design instead of "doing their job", consider they did it in their free time :o.
People didn't complain about the game in BW? I don't know, but foreigners still got trashed by koreans ultimately, and BW probably could have been (or not, can't know) a better game if it was possible to talk to Blizzard about it.
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If something has an even 1% chance of being patched in your favor by complaining about it/posting about it on the forums, why would you not? Seems like a clear way to gain an edge imo and as many others have pointed out it's not just foreigners that have complained about balance. Also, this post just seems slightly out of line as it insinuates foreign players aren't putting in as much effort as Koreans simply because their play is inferior. (Which may or may not be true)
Whether we like it or not the Korean scene has always and most likely will always be miles ahead of the foreign scene as a whole and there is very little that can be done about it in the near future.
I agree that a more competitive foreign scene would be great for the game however I'm not sure a post like this is going to do much to accomplish that.
Just my thoughts!
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On March 23 2016 05:57 Response wrote:
If something has an even 1% chance of being patched in your favor by complaining about it/posting about it on the forums, why would you not?
Because clinging to that idea will poison your mindset?
The perceived imbalance affects you way more than the actual imbalance. Thats why you shouldnt think about it too much imo.
you only control what you can control...
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On March 23 2016 00:26 Clonester wrote:
And now a personal attack:
It is super ironic that a player who never "got gud" enough to play agains koreans and who won his only major competition in a tournament without koreans is now attacking the foreigners who cant win against koreans on major stages. The very same person that wasnt able to do the same is now attacking a new generation of foreigners who, after 10 years of "getting gud" did not work out, use lobbying and whining as a new approach.
"I'm affected by how well non-Korean players do their job and they're not doing it as well as the Koreans."
The same could be said about the thread OP and makes his statements even more..., i am not going the Redeye way... strange.
You're speaking to a foreigner who almost won a Courage tournament. NonY is far from a scrub who never "got gud" enough to take on Koreans.
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On March 23 2016 00:26 Clonester wrote:
It is super ironic that a player who never "got gud" enough to play agains koreans
......... LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
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TLADT24920 Posts
Really good OP and overall, some pretty terrible replies. Nony laid out the point very clearly, even more so with his subsequent replies. Stop balance whining and focus on your game, that's pretty much it. It's not some revolutionary idea and it makes perfect sense as well.
Even if it takes mere minutes to write something and go back to practicing, the idea of x unit is causing me to lose y% of my games is a big detriment to one's game. It becomes a subconscious block for the majority of players and affects their performance.
In other words, if you are someone who truly loves the game and wants to be the best, focus on finding the weakness in your game and work hard on overcoming it. Same thing applies to overcoming new "imba" strategies. It goes without saying that only those who can adapt and are willing to reinvent themselves constantly will survive in an ever-changing RTS game like starcraft.
Also, you guys should really stop it with the personal attacks. I think it's great that his post seems to be engaging the community but no reason to attack one's achievements.
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Seems like there's a general consensus that its necessary and even good to complain and suggest better game design, but what I'm not seeing from the pros who have responded is why they have not been able to rise to the task of challenging top Koreans, which is what Nony is really getting at. His suggestion to focus more on the game is good, his suggestion to stop complaining about balance is wrong. I think you can complain about balance while still focusing on the game.
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I agree with NonY. I think he makes his points pretty clearly. His responses in the thread further clarify his positions and openness to other opinions.
Love the blog NonY, hope you write more despite some potentially frustrating responses to this one
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Have any of you ever watched Nony`s Stream? I`m not really good at the game. But Nony Knows the game PERIOD. AGAIN watch he`s stream and LISTEN to how he plays the game....!! Really Nony i Respect you alot and your totally right about this "Problem"
Toe-to-toe? No, not nearly as good. Nowhere close. I guess that's another thing we'll have to agree to disagree. If you want to bet your life on MLord beating Zest, TY, Dark, Solar, etc, when the conditions are fair and the Koreans actually care about winning, then I think you are nuts. It is nowhere near even. In a bo7, those Korean players win 95%+ of the time I think.
sad that you dont play anymore (said it before)
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I personally blame some former community figures and current players who whine all the time. Strangely it is always the own race that is underpowered while verything else is obviously OP. I think the climate is now somewhat poisoned because anyone who is halfway decent at the game now thinks he's a game designer.
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On March 25 2016 03:29 AngryMag wrote:
I personally blame some former community figures and current players who whine all the time. Strangely it is always the own race that is underpowered while verything else is obviously OP. I think the climate is now somewhat poisoned because anyone who is halfway decent at the game now thinks he's a game designer.
Do you think the game would be in perfectly good shape now if the people who "whined" had just been quiet and more people would be playing because there's no problem at all with the game and all complaints came from divas and idiots? Because I feel like the overwhelming negative feedback may actually have been due to people actually not liking the game that much.
Reading some of you people it's like everything is perfect and people complained out of the blue. "SC2 was great but then there was mass paranoia!".
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On March 25 2016 04:45 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2016 03:29 AngryMag wrote:
I personally blame some former community figures and current players who whine all the time. Strangely it is always the own race that is underpowered while verything else is obviously OP. I think the climate is now somewhat poisoned because anyone who is halfway decent at the game now thinks he's a game designer. Do you think the game would be in perfectly good shape now if the people who "whined" had just been quiet and more people would be playing because there's no problem at all with the game and all complaints came from divas and idiots? Because I feel like the overwhelming negative feedback may actually have been due to people actually not liking the game that much. Reading some of you people it's like everything is perfect and people complained out of the blue. "SC2 was great but then there was mass paranoia!".
Nah but I would say that 99% of the whine is unqualified bitching. I think that it actually makes the game designer's job harder because they have to filter out the 1% of viable complaints out of a sea of bullshit.
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On March 25 2016 04:59 AngryMag wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2016 04:45 Djzapz wrote:On March 25 2016 03:29 AngryMag wrote:
I personally blame some former community figures and current players who whine all the time. Strangely it is always the own race that is underpowered while verything else is obviously OP. I think the climate is now somewhat poisoned because anyone who is halfway decent at the game now thinks he's a game designer. Do you think the game would be in perfectly good shape now if the people who "whined" had just been quiet and more people would be playing because there's no problem at all with the game and all complaints came from divas and idiots? Because I feel like the overwhelming negative feedback may actually have been due to people actually not liking the game that much. Reading some of you people it's like everything is perfect and people complained out of the blue. "SC2 was great but then there was mass paranoia!". Nah but I would say that 99% of the whine is unqualified bitching. I think that it actually makes the game designer's job harder because they have to filter out the 1% of viable complaints out of a sea of bullshit.
It just seems to me like if you have that many complaints maybe there's something that people fundamentally dislike about the game. Like do you imagine that people in other games are more qualified at all? If anything the SC2 community has some of the more insightful comments about the game when compared to MOBAs where the ratio of knowledgeable folks to idiots is absolutely astounding, or even CSGO. SC2 players tend to think a whole lot more, as is expected of people who play RTS. And no one is concerned for those games.
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I don't believe that Blizzard only looks at Korean pro-gamer gameplay.
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you are of the same kind of what you critizise, and a post like this is not better by any means. Do your job and dedicate 24/7 of your life to the game, or just leave it..
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Excellent psot
edit: read through the thread
damn some people are mad. saw some relevant comments from people like huk and snute. saw some tearful comments from other pros who clearly missed the point of the blog and then call it "pointless". pretty funny to see that, then again their results speak for that
and then a bunch of people who decide to attack nony himself cuz they're mad cuz nony says how things are
nony is a guy who has flamed me (well taht's a strong word actually, he was quite civil about it) when discussing wcs, since i'm basically the forum's biggest wcs whiner. but now i see this post and he is saying it how it is. agree or disagree with nony, he's a cool guy. though i agree with him with this post. 10/10
time for foreigners to start actually trying instead of finding excuses. we need our next stephano, i hope that wcs welfare doesn't kill off the slim chance we had at finding dat next king of foreigners
ps (off topic): @artosis if you're reading this thread, i'm incog from your chat. hi! hope you're well!
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This is a depressing thread filled with people attacking one of Nony's best advice to the SC2 scene.
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Toe-to-toe? No, not nearly as good. Nowhere close. I guess that's another thing we'll have to agree to disagree. If you want to bet your life on MLord beating Zest, TY, Dark, Solar, etc, when the conditions are fair and the Koreans actually care about winning, then I think you are nuts. It is nowhere near even. In a bo7, those Korean players win 95%+ of the time I think.
Well TY didn`t do that good but the rest shows what Nony was trying to tell us...
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Gold Series International 2016/All Star Challenge
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Crazy how many people are attacking Tyler over this @_@. There's a difference between dumb, clearly broken strategies that have occurred in the past and things that might be OP in the current meta...it's one of the roles of the progamer to explore these things and overcome what might appear to be potential "imbalances." One thing I have consistently noticed in LOTV so far...the better the players, the more "fun" the game appears to be. Watching high level players duke it out drives me back to the game  .
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On March 21 2016 18:09 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2016 16:41 FFW_Rude wrote:
Remember when we bought a game and just played it And that sometimes we could download patches because the editor felt like it ? Now everyone wants to "Correct the game".
i'm sur Warcraft, Watcraft II, Starcraft, Brood War were good because the community chimmed in. Yeah but that was also the era where they released games when they're done instead of when Activision wants to publish
That's just not true. Lots of games were realeased with bugs and unfinished. Hidden and dangerous anyone ? Or Mankind ? The box edition never worked. They had to realease a "Mankind 1.5". And it was when we bought CDS and Boxes
So no. Lots of games came out at the time had problems. It's just that internet made us spoiled kids.
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On March 22 2016 09:23 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2016 09:17 MyLovelyLurker wrote:[B]On March 22 2016 06:21 NonY wrote:
PS: Point 1.5: Even if the progamer could contribute something by taking the initiative to write comments to the game devs, it's not as though they're likely to improve the process much. Game design doesn't halt because progamers aren't randomly submitting memos to the dev team anymore. The game will improve with or without the these posts.
So what ? Nony, I respect you and generally agree with the 'a little less conversation, a little more action' line. But just because pro posts bring little balancing value doesn't mean they're not otherwise valuable altogether. I suck at the game compared to pros, and so I'm interested in what strategic insights the likes of Snute, Nerchio, Huk and Drogo - who have all posted in this thread - are bringing. If anyone should comment on the state of the game, it should be them. This makes the community better, and sets TL apart from the rest. Whether these insights are framed in a balance context or not is not fully relevant ( pros shouldn't be held to the superhuman standard of posting 100% signal-to-noise ratio either ), and also likely transitory given LotV's relatively young history. I think you misread my post as I didn't say they brought no value whatsoever. There's something wrong with every non-Korean community to be so much worse at the game than the Koreans for so long. Something has to change culturally or mentally or something. I don't have the complete answer on how to build an environment that will yield players as good as Koreans. But I think my suggestions in this blog are some places to start. Providing interesting discussion on a forum is of such low value and importance relative to this... I'm sorry that it'd be something you miss, but hopefully the improvement of the games would be worth the diminishing of the forums. Nothing has to change. It's cultural and societal. I see a lot of glossing-over in the OP.
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On March 28 2016 18:25 Qwyn wrote:
There's a difference between dumb, clearly broken strategies that have occurred in the past and things that might be OP in the current meta..
that's your opinion. the next Bl/infestor / swarmhost /blink era could happen soon if nobody voices their opinion about the current metagame.
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Korea (South)1897 Posts
On March 21 2016 02:00 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2016 03:31 JimmyJRaynor wrote:thx for taking the time to create this blog. On March 20 2016 00:27 NonY wrote:
But the Koreans are way better than you. Getting good results against the Korean players at Blizzcon this year would be absolutely the best thing you can do for the scene.
The game is not that bad. You are.
Get good. grrrr was more competitive than any other foreigner. he assimilated... learned to speak korean... etc etc. i believe you must do this to become the best Starcraft player in the world. the only time a foreign pro will have a legit shot at becoming world champ is if he or she does like grrrr did more than a decade ago. your thoughts? Hey, I remember that you made this assertion before, more than 6 months ago. And as I replied then ; 'Also, jimmyjraynor, I really can't agree with your claim that Giyom's success was caused by his korean assimilation. I don't know when you started following competitive brood war, but Giyom was basically the best player in the world before he went to Korea. He won PGL season 4 and the Brood War World Championship in 1999, two of the absolutely biggest tournaments that year, and went to Korea in early 2000. Additionally, it's not like Korea was really dominant during this era anyway. I'd argue that in 1999, there were more top players outside Korea than inside Korea - this changes for sure in 2000 though, and might not have been true at the end of 99 either. Slayer won KBK in 2000 as well - this was an era where nonkorean players actually could compete with the Koreans. If the OSL Giyom won had had 50% koreans and 50% the best players from outside Korea, it easily could have been a nonkorean final. in fact Giyom is a funny example to use because you could just as well argue that his assimilation into Korean culture and learning the language is what caused his brood war downfall lol' The idea that Giyom became so good at brood war because he moved to Korea simply isn't true. It is a very different era though - and stating that a nonkorean in say, 2008, would have to move to korea if he hoped to become one of the best, that's fair enough, but the Giyom story doesn't support your assertion.
hehe, whether you take this off thread or not,
Liquid'Drone is 100% correct in everything he has said. While there is much to say about Giyom's mentality in 2003 where he had played possibility the best game ever for his 3rd place WCG, the second last sentence "'in fact Giyom is a funny example to use because you could just as well argue that his assimilation into Korean culture and learning the language is what caused his brood war downfall lol'" is actually a very true and concerning fact for many of us around Giyom at that time.
I'm NOT saying that I disagree with your general point of assimilation etc, but Giyom isn't a good example to use when it comes to gain skill, that's the point I want to make here, he was in a class above, if he had stayed in Quebec and just flew in for tournaments, he may have ruled forever lol. I would genuinely say that he was probably the only one person who could have stopped the Juggernaut of Slayer Boxer, back in 2000 at the 1st WCG had he not been disqualified because he had an appointment at a variety show. ROFL.
As someone who has personally known Giyom from early 1999, and lived with him for many years in Korea along with Elky, and was the tournament organizer for the country to country SCBW at the 1st WCG and actually saw him grow up over 17 years. Trust me, Liquid'Drone is absolutely correct.
Hi Liquid'Drone ^^
But to the OP's point, the one thing Giyom never did was complain about the match up, map or balance issues. And this was something he did learn in Korea, he accepted how his mouse was, whatever keyboard he got and simply focused and played, - but again, he was a singular talent. I actually recall him saying this.
So as an example:
There is his pimpest play in 2003, found here:
http://sclegacy.com/art/4-pp/269-pimpest-plays-2002
What a lot of kiddies don't know is that map was imbalanced towards a Zerg/Protoss match up and it was very well known, AND, LeeZerg does execute the build to as good as it gets and SHOULD have and WOULD have wiped out any other protoss gamer, Korean or otherwise during that game. And Giyom wins by basically defending against it - with pure skill and innovation (at the time) and - not able to actually have any other option as he can't go on a fully offensive because of the map and that he was under pressure the entire game literally non-stop. (I was at work when he called me to tell me about his win, it was a good day that day ^^)
So if you know the background of the map, then you get why it was so pimpy.
As a Korean, I am blown away by Giyom's level of focus in all things he choose to care about, as well as Elky's ability as well plus Elky's drive to do nothing but be better, and this ability to focus, is something that Koreans have as a basic trait - whether it's genetic or by nurture, it is something found in Korean competitors and so for very technical & focus oriented sports we generally excel in, see archery as an example.
As far as the OP goes, I get the point he is trying to make about what the priorities should be as a matter of focus, not as a matter of each pro's intentions, as everyone's intention is to be better.
But the question still begs, how to be better, and I'll say, that for everyone who says Koreans' can't be beat or on the other hand saying that if you get coaches etc then you can be as good as Koreans as it's just the set-up.
It simply is not that simple,
as Giyom generally did not practice hard or did it the Korean way, but in some ways you could say that Elky was more Koreans that Koreans were in some instances.
*^^* There is of course some formulas to it, but what I've always said, its cool that Koreans are great at this game, but it would be cooler if we actually developed that game. In this way, the foreigners will always have one up on the Koreans - if that makes the foreigners feel any better (or worse keke!).
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Norway28665 Posts
2003 was also the best year for pimpest plays in general, I think.
edit: oh jesus reading how I phrased myself when I was 18 is cringeworthy 
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EPT
