Even with all new guys going along with little brother, BW still has tournaments with nice prize pool and ~700 live viewers. What I mean is, $1500 prize pool, sayle being the only guy streaming and we still have ~700 live viewers. There would be a lot more if more initiative was taken by more people and not just Game/Sayle/a small bunch of other people.
Except for the streams, ISL has Starleague level organizational structure. Sayle is great, awesome, all that good jazz, but a single guy streaming and casting all of these with some broadcasts taking 13ish hours with no break means streaming needs help. I also feel that I need to congratulate Sayle here because of the 13 hour solo broadcast. I wish someone else also stepped up for that. Elegant did this for quite a while but I don't see him under ISL any more.
So, you guys must be wondering why I took a paragraph to talk about ISL, let me connect it to the topic and continue with my seemingly tryhard motivational great wall of text. With TL as a brand pulling out of BW completely, we still have an exceptionally good tourney which is organized by literally some guys.
Speaking of "some guys", that is officially what we are (no offense to any of us, but TL BW community, which is some forum goers that play and watch BW together in a forum despite that forum being TL makes us some guys in the eyes of someone who is looking from outside).
Also, "some guys" is the form of anything, any organizational structure, any company when it's just founded. What I mean is, BW may be dying in the eyes of some, but it is reincarnating in my eyes. So, what I mean is that this is not a "last hurrah". This is an opportunity. To start a tradition. Just like TSL. We may expand this and eventually turn this into something big. But that is in our hands.
Enough with the motivational part, I think there can be another low level clan that can be founded initially. One means monopoly, 2 means competition, right? Other than that, well... Nothing that is not written by L_Master comes in my mind.
I spoilered your wall of text so people can see my post.
Thanks for the credit there to me and Sayle, but more importantly are things that follow. The people who have worked on the ISL's are extremely dedicated, and you seem to think there are fewer staff than actually exist. To be honest, ISL1 and ISL2 both independently had 10+ as staff, with 5-6 of them being entirely dedicated. Me and Sayle are just the people that are visible publicly. Granted I put in a lot of effort in retrospect, and Sayle puts in a lot of time, just saying don't sell the other guys short please
Honestly though, there are plenty of BW lovers out there willing to sponsor tournaments. I in fact haven't been able to personally keep up with them all, which might come as a surprise. Unfortunately, most want to be an independent sponsor and name tournaments after themselves, which is not a great thing for a communal starleague or large tournament. To be fair though, Eywa ran Gambit Cup season 1 nearly without flaw, and is investing a lot of time into future projects. More people like Eywa would be great.
Also, as far as the lack of casters is concerned... I've basically researched every BW caster and came to a very simple conclusion: "They all suck." I'm not talking about NukeTheStars and people like that, who respectfully declined to cast the first ISL, but the people who will work for free. I'd love to help build names, but Sayle and EleGant were really the only capable at the time. EleGant lost his internet connection, and well, the rest is history. As of right now, the only person I can personally enjoy as a caster is hacklebeast. He's very entertaining, and his lisp of the letter "s" literally makes me laugh out loud because it reminds me of Jeff Gallagher (radio personality). I wish he had more BW knowledge, then he'd be perfect. Not trying to rip anyone, but needed to bring some clarity to your post of that issue.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm not selling any single person from the ISL2 team short . Most of the 10+ people team in ISL1 was CATs each of who devoted and still devotes a fuckton of effort and I'm sure something similar applies to ISL2 as well. What I meant by "some guys" is exactly that. A team of people devoting fuckton of effort all day every day about what they're trying to accomplish.
And I also didn't know about Elegant's situation (sorry elegant if I was harsh about it).
But I feel you have to like playing BW before you want to get good at it.
Like most things, my friend doesn't practice playing the violin everyday because he hates it. I feel like you have to like a lot of things before you try to get good at it. Isn't that the point? because you like it? and want to get better?
Liquipedia is for when you want something with more depth than 2v2v2v2 BGH or you've already decided to try and get good at BW.
Not always the case, my best friend uses it when ever he decides to play BW with his FPS friends, they're all casual and none of them are trying to get good at BW. It's a great resource for both everyone and every level (okay maybe not progamer level).
Then show it! I'm not saying BW is a game of memorization, because that's obviously stupid. I'm saying not enough people say that it isn't. Most people just jump into SC2 vs BW mode and start talking about APM and Mechanics and how the skill ceiling is higher etc etc etc., and not enough people are saying that's it's fucking fun. And it is! "It's immaculately subtle" won't get casuals, and you need casuals to get the hardcore guys.
Possibly because 'fucking fun' is a very subjective term. So people talk about liking the higher skill ceiling/apm/mechanics/whatever else they might have said.
Honestly high level management of micro/macro/unit control and able to generate the appropriate strategy on the fly is the fundamental essence of broodwar.
I don't think I will ever get any goosebump looking at sc2 knowing that these guys have it easy and the bw pro gamers in order to produce that kind of awe inspiring and jaw dropping games have gone through what seems to us casual as a nightmare seems to be like an easy thing to them .
Human spirit won over the lousy interface and that to me is the reason why broodwar is great . This is my opinion as hyde mention above it's pretty subjective but to my standards broodwar games needs to have all these essential things to make it interesting .
On October 01 2011 00:24 Sawamura wrote: I don't think I will ever get any goosebump looking at sc2 knowing that these guys have it easy and the bw pro gamers in order to produce that kind of awe inspiring and jaw dropping games have gone through what seems to us casual as a nightmare seems to be like an easy thing to them .
Human spirit won over the lousy interface and that to me is the reason why broodwar is great . This is my opinion as hyde mentiona above it's pretty subjective but to my standards broodwar games needs to have all these essential things to make it interesting .
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If someone who didn't know anything about BW read this, the take-away would be "Oh, it's like SC2 but more impressive because the interface is more annoying". That's not a particularly good sell for playing it. Saying that BW is impressive is all well and good, but we need to be saying it's fun. and you didn't.
Brood War is, in the end, a video game. People play games to have fun, not to be impressive. Talk about fun. If that's hard to quantify, post pimpest play videos because they tend to do a good job of making the game look fun.
On October 01 2011 00:24 Sawamura wrote: I don't think I will ever get any goosebump looking at sc2 knowing that these guys have it easy and the bw pro gamers in order to produce that kind of awe inspiring and jaw dropping games have gone through what seems to us casual as a nightmare seems to be like an easy thing to them .
Human spirit won over the lousy interface and that to me is the reason why broodwar is great . This is my opinion as hyde mentiona above it's pretty subjective but to my standards broodwar games needs to have all these essential things to make it interesting .
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If someone who didn't know anything about BW read this, the take-away would be "Oh, it's like SC2 but more impressive because the interface is more annoying". That's not a particularly good sell for playing it. Saying that BW is impressive is all well and good, but we need to be saying it's fun. and you didn't.
Brood War is, in the end, a video game. People play games to have fun, not to be impressive. Talk about fun. If that's hard to quantify, post pimpest play videos because they tend to do a good job of making the game look fun.
To those of us who have played bw on iccup it has never been FUN on laddering , no one's going to carry your hand and give you the baby step . Everyone went through a period of getting smashed and at some times I felt I wanted to quit . But I know that if I am able to hold on and wait patiently and practice more I can win games .
Lots of bw members are really helpfull in giving tips and what you should improve in the strategy forum . I can say that my experience of bw the fun only kick in when I was able to play at my highest level taking down D+ ,C- players and that was fun .However to treat every newbies with a red carpet saying and holding their hand along the ropes .It's impossible if you want to improve in broodwar you have to spend time and yes it's a video game that require lots of dedication to be good .
No I don't believe we should sugar coat the experience to newbies and say "hey this is fun " ain't happening . They got to learn the ropes by them selves and we are willing to point out their mistakes but they can't hope to get all the special treatment they have gotten in sc2 . Automatic match making and etc.
There is no shortcut to winning a game in broodwar , you are going to have one hell of a time struggling to survive and coming with what ever strategy to get the advantage back to you .If fun is really what you want to establish . I think the BGH is really quite active on iccup . However , I have always taken esports seriously be it cs 1.6 , source and broodwar . There's no such thing as fun until I win the game .
I would totally do this, but i would have to buy another computer with an xp or vista OS to start playing BW again. Currently my Asus laptop crashes every fucking time when i play for like 30 mins. Screen freezes and shit :[
On October 01 2011 00:24 Sawamura wrote: I don't think I will ever get any goosebump looking at sc2 knowing that these guys have it easy and the bw pro gamers in order to produce that kind of awe inspiring and jaw dropping games have gone through what seems to us casual as a nightmare seems to be like an easy thing to them .
Human spirit won over the lousy interface and that to me is the reason why broodwar is great . This is my opinion as hyde mentiona above it's pretty subjective but to my standards broodwar games needs to have all these essential things to make it interesting .
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If someone who didn't know anything about BW read this, the take-away would be "Oh, it's like SC2 but more impressive because the interface is more annoying". That's not a particularly good sell for playing it. Saying that BW is impressive is all well and good, but we need to be saying it's fun. and you didn't.
Brood War is, in the end, a video game. People play games to have fun, not to be impressive. Talk about fun. If that's hard to quantify, post pimpest play videos because they tend to do a good job of making the game look fun.
To those of us who have played bw on iccup it has never been FUN on laddering
Well, you're just not doing it right. I just played a BW game at 54 APM on goddamn Lost Temple with no real plan except liquipedia open to 2 gate range expand (which I royally fucked up) and I had hella fun.
no one's going to carry your hand and give you the baby step . Everyone went through a period of getting smashed and at some times I felt I wanted to quit . But I know that if I am able to hold on and wait patiently and practice more I can win games .
I had that period too. I bought a mouse and everything. And if you think I'm bad at BW now, you should've seen me when I was playing 2-3 games a day, trying to improve, in the ICCUP Training Program. Am I gonna get into D+ this way? Probably not. But I don't really care, and neither do a lot of people I'm a casual BW fan. We exist.
Lots of bw members are really helpfull in giving tips and what you should improve in the strategy forum.
Well yeah, if you're a nerd
But why should I have to spend hours and hours of boring shit just to get to have even a tiny bit of fun? Why does Brood War have to be Final Fantasy XIII? Not a lot of people want to play that way. And you do. And that's totally fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with approaching BW the way you do.
I just think it's a harder sell that it has to be. Most people usually need to be a guy like me before he can be a guy like you. And some guys like me have no interest in getting to C, and that's okay. And you want to get good at the game. And that's also okay. There's more than one way to enjoy Brood War.
It's impossible if you want to improve in broodwar you have to spend time and yes it's a video game that require lots of dedication to be good.
Here's the thing, though. I have a full time job. I have other interests. I watch anime, listen to music, and, yes, play and watch SC2. I don't have the time to get to D+ in BW or Diamond in SC2. And I don't expect to do either in the near future. But I enjoy both games regardless. I'm not unusal in that respect. Not everyone is hardcore.
No I don't believe we should sugar coat the experience to newbies and say "hey this is fun " ain't happening .
"Hey, wanna play this old game?" "Is it fun?" "Nope!"
Do you want BW to die?
[qupte]They got to learn the ropes by them selves and we are willing to point out their mistakes but they can't hope to get all the special treatment they have gotten in sc2 . Automatic match making and etc.[/quote]
....Really? All the ways SC2 players have it easy, and you went with the ability to get a good game going without getting smurfed? The one and only universally popular change? Not automine? Not smart-cast? Matchmaking. Okay.
Also, I know what my mistakes in the replay I linked are. I floated a bazillion dollars, left my production facilities idle, and got supply blocked at every increment of 8. I'm sure I made tons of other errors, but I don't think any of them even matter compared to not building shit. If I wanted to improve, I'd take a build from Liquipedia, load up a 1v1 against the computer, and just practice the opening 30 times a day for a week until I could execute it flawlessly, and then go back to the ladder. The ICCUP training program would tell me I needed more zealots against that many tanks, but what I really needed were another few gateways and not to get supply blocked.
And, with practice, I could fix all of these things. I just kind of don't want to. I have other shit to do. And if that means I'm in D forever watching gosu players from afar, then I guess I'm forever D. But it doesn't matter, none of it matters, because I am having fun.
There is no shortcut to winning a game in broodwar , you are going to have one hell of a time struggling to survive and coming with what ever strategy to get the advantage back to you .If fun is really what you want to establish . I think the BGH is really quite active on iccup . However , I have always taken esports seriously be it cs 1.6 , source and broodwar . There's no such thing as fun until I win the game .
And there's nothing wrong with people like you.
But you're severely over-represented in the BW community, because it's the hardcore who stuck with it this long. Most people aren't hardcore. Most are casual. Some casuals fall in love and become hardcore. Most don't. Nature of the beast. If we want to grow BW, we have to appeal to a casual base of players, who'll create a feedback loop by devaluing the ICCUP ranks and making it easier to feel like you're not playing a game of Get Smashed in the Face by Koreans, but are instead playing a game you enjoy.
I speak as an avid starcraft 2 fan and an occasional brood war watcher. The big turn off for me as a noob is the korean commentating because i dont understand a thing going on. Also, when i play broodwar, its really really difficult and a huge turnoff for me when i can just play sc2 and have a much easier time. So thats my feedback. I thnk people commentating pro games in english would be really good. I wish you guys luck!
I have a feeling that right before Blizz released SC2, there was the golden age of BW with a lot of players on ICCup and BW being commentated by english commentators live and reccorded (who remember PL Final English Live coverage?). Those players are mostly D to C. The thing is that IF Blizz released the game just a bit later, those players would get to C to B making Iccup much more competitive. Right now we need to embrace EVERY member that joins in to BW, everyone is precious. That's how we preserve BW.
No I don't believe we should sugar coat the experience to newbies and say "hey this is fun " ain't happening .
Wtf are you talking about? BW is about as fun as it gets.
There has never been a stage in my BW career where BW has not been fun for me. It was fun when I was a 20 APM noob that thought 1 base forge -> photon cannons -> carrier off in base was a great strat. It was fun when I was a D- noob that couldn't macro at all and went 2-89 in my first season, the two wins being DT PvP wins where the other dude had no observers. It's still fun now at D+.
Anyway, enough of the off topic stuff. This is a thread for discussing ideas and suggestions we can use to make the BW community and infrastructure better.
Quit with the discussions of sc2/bw, "funness" of BW, etc. This isn't the thread for that.
One idea I had was to run a tournament for SC2 people who have never even played BW before. Sounds silly, but I think it could be a lot of fun for players and spectators alike.
I think the most important thing is to make trying BW out more accessible - right now people maybe make a thread, get told that Iccup is the best place to find games, and probably most of them just get smashed and give up. My (probably suboptimal or inadequate) suggestions for fixing this would be to make a list of veteran players (not necessarily ballers - probably anyone at least D+ can do it) who are willing to help newer players get started. The point being that when newer players log into Iccup there would be at least one of the people on the list online. You could even schedule certain times of day when newer players and veterans would agree to meet so that the players would have people to play against at their level and a veteran to help them out - low level clans could accomplish this too, I guess.
On October 01 2011 00:24 Sawamura wrote: I don't think I will ever get any goosebump looking at sc2 knowing that these guys have it easy and the bw pro gamers in order to produce that kind of awe inspiring and jaw dropping games have gone through what seems to us casual as a nightmare seems to be like an easy thing to them .
Human spirit won over the lousy interface and that to me is the reason why broodwar is great . This is my opinion as hyde mentiona above it's pretty subjective but to my standards broodwar games needs to have all these essential things to make it interesting .
This is exactly what I'm talking about. If someone who didn't know anything about BW read this, the take-away would be "Oh, it's like SC2 but more impressive because the interface is more annoying". That's not a particularly good sell for playing it. Saying that BW is impressive is all well and good, but we need to be saying it's fun. and you didn't.
Brood War is, in the end, a video game. People play games to have fun, not to be impressive. Talk about fun. If that's hard to quantify, post pimpest play videos because they tend to do a good job of making the game look fun.
To those of us who have played bw on iccup it has never been FUN on laddering
Well, you're just not doing it right. I just played a BW game at 54 APM on goddamn Lost Temple with no real plan except liquipedia open to 2 gate range expand (which I royally fucked up) and I had hella fun.
no one's going to carry your hand and give you the baby step . Everyone went through a period of getting smashed and at some times I felt I wanted to quit . But I know that if I am able to hold on and wait patiently and practice more I can win games .
I had that period too. I bought a mouse and everything. And if you think I'm bad at BW now, you should've seen me when I was playing 2-3 games a day, trying to improve, in the ICCUP Training Program. Am I gonna get into D+ this way? Probably not. But I don't really care, and neither do a lot of people I'm a casual BW fan. We exist.
Lots of bw members are really helpfull in giving tips and what you should improve in the strategy forum.
Well yeah, if you're a nerd
But why should I have to spend hours and hours of boring shit just to get to have even a tiny bit of fun? Why does Brood War have to be Final Fantasy XIII? Not a lot of people want to play that way. And you do. And that's totally fine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with approaching BW the way you do.
I just think it's a harder sell that it has to be. Most people usually need to be a guy like me before he can be a guy like you. And some guys like me have no interest in getting to C, and that's okay. And you want to get good at the game. And that's also okay. There's more than one way to enjoy Brood War.
It's impossible if you want to improve in broodwar you have to spend time and yes it's a video game that require lots of dedication to be good.
Here's the thing, though. I have a full time job. I have other interests. I watch anime, listen to music, and, yes, play and watch SC2. I don't have the time to get to D+ in BW or Diamond in SC2. And I don't expect to do either in the near future. But I enjoy both games regardless. I'm not unusal in that respect. Not everyone is hardcore.
No I don't believe we should sugar coat the experience to newbies and say "hey this is fun " ain't happening .
"Hey, wanna play this old game?" "Is it fun?" "Nope!"
Do you want BW to die?
You don't advertise every game by saying "hey, you should try this out, you'll have fun you'll see". It just gives false expectations.
Not everyone is hardcore, but you're not selling Brood War to everyone in the first place. BW neither needs nor can attract a mass audience at this point. It's more important to attract maybe 10-20 "right" players who haven't really heard of Brood War (other than being a Blizzard game with cool storyline) or competitive-minded SC2 players than 100-200 random people who will inevitably quit after they see what's up.
Ultimately, if you're still sticking with BW even without being able to put in too much time and effort into the game, you are a hardcore gamer whether you think of yourself as one or not. Being a hardcore gamer isn't about the quantity of time and effort put in, it's about the mindset and what attracts you in a game.
IMO BW should definitely be "advertised" as a challenge of sorts. When I talk of BW, I talk about it as if I'm talking about chess, not Gears of War. And you'll never get anyone interested in chess by saying "it's a really cool game you should try it".
The important thing is to realize that there are plenty of people out there who will be attracted to a "hardcore" game, it's actually a growing tendency lately.
EPT
. Most of the 10+ people team in ISL1 was CATs each of who devoted and still devotes a fuckton of effort and I'm sure something similar applies to ISL2 as well. What I meant by "some guys" is exactly that. A team of people devoting fuckton of effort all day every day about what they're trying to accomplish.
