On January 07 2011 12:56 Ryuu314 wrote: Currently, I play SC2, but watch and prefer to watch BW. SC2 is definitely more playable for 90%+ of the gaming community, but SC2 is just nowhere near as fun to watch. I honestly believe, that unless changes are made, BW is not only going to stay, but it will usurp SC2 in Korea completely, and if that happens, SC2 proscene will dwindle and become more or less what War3 was. Even though Korea is only a small part of the international proscene, esports in general have always had its largest and biggest and most influential tourneys and events in Korea (maybe sometimes China, but China sticks to War3 and BW currently).
The reasons for this is simply because BW is so much more fun to watch than SC2. If you watch most games of BW, there's always action going on all the time, no matter which pros are playing. Troop movements are a constant. Several armies (not just 1 or 2) from both players are constantly patrolling the map, trying to gain positional advantages. Harassment is a given and is also constantly happening. BW simply has more action in every game.
Contrast that to SC2. Even at the highest level. Games are usually more or less either a. Early rush/cheese because of the maps/player skill or b. Two players sitting on their asses massing up two large armies to smash into each other. Games are almost always decided by 1 or 2 engagements. Obviously, this is an oversimplification. Sometimes you see wonderful, amazing games with lots of breathtaking back and forth action, but that is not the case in the vast majority of games. A lot of the players in every tournament to date tend to favor "boring" play, be it early game shenanigans or sit-on-my-ass-and-wait play.
This is in part due to the less developed metagame of SC2, but largely, I think the issue can be attributed to the mappool. Maps are fucking small. Even the largest maps are retardedly small by BW standards. Yes, SC2 is not BW, but BW is successful, while SC2 is dwindling in Korea. Learn from what works. It must be understood that large maps does not automatically mean every game will be a long macro game. That is false, and quite simply a retarded view. What large maps allow, is not necessarily for longer games, but for more action-packed games. With more ground to cover, it becomes necessary for players to constantly be doing something lest they lose map control and positional advantages. It also lowers the possibility for games to be decided by simply one engagement and will increase the chances of a back-and-forth game.
Whether or not a game succeeds must depend on viewability of tournament play at the highest level. If the highest level tournament is boring to watch, the game simply will not take off.
EDIT: Some people say that it's okay, SC2 can fail in Korea as long as it stays strong in the West. While that might be true, I personally believe that for the esports scene to succeed, SC2 must at least gain some popularity in Korea. Currently, Korea is still the mecca of esports in that the largest, most prestigious tournaments are still being held there. Simply just compare the prizepool for largest tournament in Korea (GSL) and the largest ones in the West. The two are vastly different. The West simply does not have the proper cultural and societal view of esports (yet) to really allow esports to become "legit". It will take a time and more importantly, proof that esports is as viable a career choice as playing basketball or football is. Korea can provide that proof, which can currently be found no where else. Not anywhere near the same scale at least.
Very well put. I'll admit, when I saw that wall of text, I was going to skip reading it, but I'm glad I didn't.
On January 07 2011 13:01 baubo wrote:
Umm... Boxer/Nada/July at this point aren't capable of top level BW games anymore.
If there's any indication of the lack of talent in SC2, it would be that MVP looks like fucking Flash in SC2.
SERIOUSLY, MVP.
I can see this being true. I remember when Fruitdealer won the GSL and everybody (well, mostly Tasteless repeatedly) was saying "oh he's sooo good." And I was like "no he's not, he's a BW scrub." I mean, sure, he's "good," but his play is nothing compared to what we could see if a legitimately great player like Flash, Jaedong, Bisu or Stork practiced the game for a couple months. We are indeed in the infancy of the skill level of the game right now.
On January 07 2011 13:23 Consolidate wrote: These are the two unavoidable truths:
1. Starcraft 2 has less gameplay depth than Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 has less skill depth than Starcraft.
I have to disagree somewhat with both points. Gameplay and skill depth is only limited, in my opinion, with the current size of the maps. There is plenty of opportunities for more skillful and deeper play to evolve as long as the players are given the environment to do so.
MBS and all those other fancy new AI stuff allows for players to spend their APM on something other than management of bases and other mechanical things. The problem, however, is that there isn't enough stuff for people to do with their APM because, well, there's not that much stuff on the map in the first place.
If you watch pro replays, players' APM can and do spike up pro-BW levels during large, micro-intensive battles. That tells me, that despite all the help players are given, there is still plenty of stuff to do. I'm sure that if players were managing 4-5 bases at a time, rather than 2-3, average APM will rise not only because it's more bases to manage, but also because that's more targets to attack. Quite simply, more stuff on the map means more stuff to do. More stuff to do means higher skill cap and greater depth of gameplay.
SC2 has potential despite the existence of MBS, automine, etc... That potential simply needs to be unlocked.
On January 07 2011 13:23 Consolidate wrote: To be brutally honest, GOMtv and Starcraft 2 will probably fail independent of the state of SC1.
GSL viewership numbers are noticeably decreasing. Why on earth would something like that happen?
The fact of the matter is that Starcraft 2 is boring to watch once the novelty wears off.
The intrinsic game design of Starcraft 2 (MBS, 1-control group, tighter collision detection, better pathing) greatly increases the effectiveness of 'timing attacks' so called 'cheese'. These are symptoms of the greater issue being that competitive advantages in Starcraft 2 are easily capitalized upon and swiftly determine the victor. Add the fact of the game's lower skill-ceiling and you have the makings if a poor spectator sport with underwhelming longevity compared to brood war.
These are the two unavoidable truths:
1. Starcraft 2 has less gameplay depth than Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 has less skill depth than Starcraft.
Blizzard can continue to put up as much prize money as they want, but they will soon realize that the waning interest in Starcraft 2 isn't for lack of competition, rather the opposite..
I'm not a fan of posts that link only YouTube videos, but this is due.
On January 07 2011 13:23 Consolidate wrote: To be brutally honest, GOMtv and Starcraft 2 will probably fail independent of the state of SC1.
GSL viewership numbers are noticeably decreasing. Why on earth would something like that happen?
The fact of the matter is that Starcraft 2 is boring to watch once the novelty wears off.
The intrinsic game design of Starcraft 2 (MBS, 1-control group, tighter collision detection, better pathing) greatly increases the effectiveness of 'timing attacks' so called 'cheese'. These are symptoms of the greater issue being that competitive advantages in Starcraft 2 are easily capitalized upon and swiftly determine the victor. Add the fact of the game's lower skill-ceiling and you have the makings if a poor spectator sport with underwhelming longevity compared to brood war.
These are the two unavoidable truths:
1. Starcraft 2 has less gameplay depth than Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 has less skill depth than Starcraft.
Blizzard can continue to put up as much prize money as they want, but they will soon realize that the waning interest in Starcraft 2 isn't for lack of competition, rather the opposite. The uncomfortable truth is that the highest levels of competition are beginning to highlight the fundamental flaws of Starcraft 2 as a spectator sport compared with the likes of Brood War.
And don't think for a second that the western world can support SC2 if Korea cannot.
Okay so here is what I take from this. I will comment on the most popular opinions.
1) Give it time.
Duh? Show me a game (or a sport) that became a hit and a sensation in the first 6 months. One great example is Lacrosse. Many cities in Canada and the US have teams, it is sponsored, and sometimes on TV. However, unless its the finals or semi-finals, no one is watching. I would argue that Lacrosse has a much better chance of being a successful (e/sport), or part of the big 4 than BW/SC2 will. There are MANY faults with SC2. Maps, players, strategies, format, tournaments, the whole works. A LOT OF THINGS ARE WRONG. But these are ALL things that can be worked out. Imbalances can be all removed with one "lucky" patch. Think about it. They can literally just press reset on the balance and get a very good product. They also have two expansions to work with. With established team houses, introduction of new maps by Blizzard or GOM is very easy. These things WILL happen, you would have to be an idiot to think that they will not.
It is also stupid to think that if it does not succeed NOW, then it cannot succeed. SC2 is already more successful than BW ever was in every place in the world not named Korea. If they the fix the game 5 years from now and give a very good product, would your response be "WELL YOU DIDN'T DO IT FIVE YEARS AGO, not WATCHING!"? Who knows. It will take time, and it has a lot of time. Look at how long BW developed for. The argument that "well, BW didn't get fed money, so it took longer. SC2 is getting fed money and large tournaments, so it should do well NOW" is mainly false. You can't make that inference, there is nothing to base it on. There is no other game that was treated like this, where you can say "hey look man, game X was fed money and succeeded after 3 months". If Brood War was fed money when it came out, it would have been a disaster and a miserable failure. The game was atrocious when it came out. Throwing money and tournaments at the game doesn't create time out of thin air. The players and developers can't use that money to purchase 50 hour days. They need time to get good, to be perfect, and to be entertaining.
2) Live Audience.
Really? Were we not all watching the TSL and getting super excited about it? How many live viewers did that tournament have? Oh yeah, none. We are in a new age. There is a computer and a TV in every house. Especially for a game like StarCraft, it is much more convenient to watch at the comfort of your own home. Everything is available in VoDs and you can watch whenever you want. Sure the atmosphere of having tens of thousand people is great, but that can be reserved for the finals.
And these online numbers are great. Sponsors are what make the proleagues, KESPA, and the TV networks go 'round. Seeing an advertisement live versus on the computer is pretty much the same. When I watch BW streams, I never see more than 1000 people watching. Minigun (an unknown Protoss until recently) gets 3 times that whenever he wants to stream. Idra gets 3-5k. Huk, Ret, TLO all get 2-4k. Day9 gets about 5k, hits 10k on Mondays. I'm not sure which GSL game it was (it was a Boxer game, probably vs Nada) where the Korean GOM site had 150-170k (corrected) hits for the VOD. That is just Korea. If he was wearing a Coke shirt, they would have seen it just the same. I'd even argue that this is better; GSL no longer attracts Korean sponsors exclusively. With such a global following (which BW never had, or well, a significant one for sponsors), the game has 100x the potential to be something BW could never be. And if you are on this site, you are more often than not (damn you Day9) a non-Korean. This should be very exciting for us that there is an e-sport growing outside of Korea, so we don't have to go to work or school every morning with baggy eyes.
3) Entertainment
SC2 is boring. BW is entertaining. I didn't play SC2, but it is boring. I didn't play BW, but it is entertaining. These statements are all face-palm worthy. Just because you don't find something entertaining, it doesn't mean it isn't. Entertainment is 100% relative, like color preference. You can't be like "You are an idiot, blue is a terrible color". For god's sakes, Jersey Shore is still running. People have different tastes. I don't understand the group that never played BW but enjoy watching it. How did you get into it? You must have played enough to get familiar with the game. Or, you have learned a lot about the game through osmosis (this is probably the case). If you haven't played SC2, and don't find it entertaining, you probably didn't follow it much, and then you don't understand it (which means you can't appreciate it... see what I did here?). This whole subject of "entertaining" needs to go. We need better words to describe this game. I agree that the game probably needs more intense moments like Reaver scarabs or vulture mines. But then again, just 2 days ago, we saw a huge army walking over a baneling bomb that demolished an entire army (not going to say which to avoid spoiler). If that is not exciting, I do not know what is. Blue flame hellions going back to the mineral lines and you know one misclick and workers are goneeee. If there are too many of these things, they lose their appeal. We still have hunter seeker missles to incorporate. People have also been doing very neat things with the warp prism as well.
When we first saw this game, we decided that it was figured out in the beta. How lame, no cool tricks like BW. Everything is straight and boring. Then we found Fazing. Then we found Immortal-Warp prism micro vs roaches. Then we found mass Orbital Commands. Then we found probe going through the double pylon block. I can go on for a while.
4) Conclusion
Success. That is really all I can say for SC2. It has earned the envy of every single game that strives to be competitive. As I write this, there are 30 people streaming. One daily show that covers SC2, and a tournament casted by djWHEAT, one of the most influential e-sports figure of all time. Furthermore, orb, catz, qxc are all drawing in a few thousand people in their streams as well. In a few more hours, there is a tournament ready to commence where THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people all around the world will watch people attempt to achieve Code S, or win the ultimate prize in Code S. In a few weeks, we will hear the release of the new exciting MLG tournaments which hosted SC2 for the first time and had GREAT success. TSL3 with its huge prize pool (for an online tournament) will draw a strong player list and draw a crap ton of viewers. I bet TeamSpeak or PokerStrategy don't really care if these viewers were live or not. I mean I can go on forever, but you get the point. If SC2 dies this June, it will be the most successful E-sport outside of Korea. It already accomplished what games have been trying to do for longer than a decade.
Competitive Brood War is also very popular because of the attention given to its players and teams. Not only are the players excellent gamers, they also give interesting interviews and do fun events, such as soccer games, crossdressing parties, Starcraft awards, etc. If nothing else this gives the sport more mainstream appeal and makes the actual Starcraft games so much more fun.
On January 07 2011 10:29 HunterStarcraft wrote: These stats surprised me a lot. GSL is the only SC2 I watch religiously because the total talent pool is way larger than any other event. Their online base + subsbriber revenue must be very significant compared to live attendance. I'm sure popularity overall will grow a lot as more Korean players (and viewers) switch over.
The talent pool is a joke lol. ogsMC's illustrious brood war was him going 1-9 and NesTea was a horrible ~30% Zerg. Until we get real plers in GSL it's gonna be stale. Also you see so many better players getting knocked out by worse players cause the worse player decided to do a 50/50 all in thats ridiculously strong on a map (like 4 warps on delta) and takes skill completely out of the equation. Maps dont help obviously, and shakuras and metal are the only maps i've seen that can consistently deliver interesting games but still, GSL is going to be boring as long as its filled with nothing but brood war rejects and war3 players
SlayerS_BoxeR was a god in BW and he hasn't achieved anything great in SC2, same goes for NaDa, July is in Code A for christ's sake. Talent in BW does not translate directly into talent in SC2. Don't know the real reasons for this, but I'd dare say that even current top BW players would have some difficulties adapting to the game at the beginning. Except jaedong he's too good haha.
Umm... Boxer/Nada/July at this point aren't capable of top level BW games anymore.
If there's any indication of the lack of talent in SC2, it would be that MVP looks like fucking Flash in SC2.
SERIOUSLY, MVP.
MVP was a rising prospect in BW before he switched to SC2. You'll be surprised to see that MVP has taken legit games off of Flash.
More telling is the fact that MVP that got knocked out the GSL by some scrub named Choya who is 0-2 in BW? The entire implication is that a lower skill ceiling produces inconsistent and random performance results.
To all the people saying 'give it time': The problem isn't time. GSL popularity is in decline. Time will only exacerbate that decline unless something changes.
I always see this as the "old" Blizzard vs the "new" Blizzard. the "old" Blizzard made: SC1, SC:BW, WC1, WC2, WC3, WoW(vanilla), Diablo1 and Diablo2. Compared to the "new" Blizzard who made: WoW: BC, WoW, Wotlk, WoW: cataclysm, SC2 and, eventually, Diablo3.
For me, every games included in the "old" Blizzard are golden and extremely memorable while the ones made by the new Blizzard are games I actually hate or don't find as fun as their first games (also to watch). It looks to me that Blizzard is worst than ever. Thanks to their already big popularity due to their first games because if it was not from these, Blizzard would probably have a hard time getting as much popularity as they have right now.
I highly doubt Blizzard will be able to make SC2 as good as BW. There's no "give it some time". Maybe that could be true, but as I said, if Blizzard continue to fail like this, SC2 will never replace BW, at least in south korea.
SC2 is not a bad game, but considering it was made by Blizzard, it is far beyond what I expected. It's actually a great game for casuals to have fun once in a while, but for a competitive game as well as a spectator one, BW is far, and will probably remain, better.
What Blizzard should do, and they probably won't, is to change the units first and then change the map pool. After these steps, we could have a similar discussion about the "new" SC2 to see if we can compare it to BW.
It has potential for sure, but I see it's in the hands of the "new" Blizzard which is why I'm not confident at all.
The ones who have fun playing and watching it, well I'm sincerely happy for you because it's not the case for me, a lot of TLers and the majority of koreans.
Cheers!
P.S.: Graphics are not what makes a game good, it's a good thing but it's far from enough.
I try to watch some SC 2 games now, but it's pretty painful. One, it reminds me of watching low-level BW -- no that exciting. Two, it's just hard on the eyes: I don't like how the game looks. I don't like how difficult it is to follow/make stuff out. It's just not a pleasure to watch.
As a BW player the game just feels wrong; tanks aren't even a viable unit in TVP? It's just odd to feel like there are two "tvz" match ups now. I feel like the unit diversity in every MU in SC made the game more interesting.
If SC 2 wants to receive more attention than it deserves, it will probably take a good/famous former SC pro to dominate/do well in SC 2 (Nada, July, Boxer). Even if I don't like SC 2, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't want to see a Nada or July game. How long that feeling will last is unknown though.
On January 07 2011 13:44 TrainSamurai wrote: Can someone please explain to me why sc2 players are obsessed with Esports? Seriously it looks like an unhealthy obsession.
GomTV are in a situation where their success will be measured against OnGameNet, MBCGame, and the Brood War e-Sports model in general.
They are partly responsible for this situation, because they have tried to certain aspects of Brood War model whole-scale (they even tried/are trying to get a TV deal). You can't really blame them for this, because it's Stacraft II after all, and there are certain things fans (and perhaps GomTV workers, subconsciously) expect from such a word. And on paper at least, you want to emulate the most successful e-Sports model that has existed so far in Korea.
It's a real trap for GomTV. Benchmarking yourself against a high quality product can definitely be a good way to improve the quality of your own product, but you run the risk of being perceived as a not-quite-as-good imitation.
On January 07 2011 10:29 HunterStarcraft wrote: These stats surprised me a lot. GSL is the only SC2 I watch religiously because the total talent pool is way larger than any other event. Their online base + subsbriber revenue must be very significant compared to live attendance. I'm sure popularity overall will grow a lot as more Korean players (and viewers) switch over.
The talent pool is a joke lol. ogsMC's illustrious brood war was him going 1-9 and NesTea was a horrible ~30% Zerg. Until we get real plers in GSL it's gonna be stale. Also you see so many better players getting knocked out by worse players cause the worse player decided to do a 50/50 all in thats ridiculously strong on a map (like 4 warps on delta) and takes skill completely out of the equation. Maps dont help obviously, and shakuras and metal are the only maps i've seen that can consistently deliver interesting games but still, GSL is going to be boring as long as its filled with nothing but brood war rejects and war3 players
SlayerS_BoxeR was a god in BW and he hasn't achieved anything great in SC2, same goes for NaDa, July is in Code A for christ's sake. Talent in BW does not translate directly into talent in SC2. Don't know the real reasons for this, but I'd dare say that even current top BW players would have some difficulties adapting to the game at the beginning. Except jaedong he's too good haha.
Umm... Boxer/Nada/July at this point aren't capable of top level BW games anymore.
If there's any indication of the lack of talent in SC2, it would be that MVP looks like fucking Flash in SC2.
SERIOUSLY, MVP.
The same MVP that got knocked out by some scrub named Choya who is 0-2 in BW? The entire implication is that a lower skill ceiling produces inconsistent and random performance results.
To all the people saying 'give it time': The problem isn't time. GSL popularity is in decline. Time will only exacerbate that decline unless something changes.
Uhh. Negative. The actual game doesn't matter when you talk about X beating Y. It doesn't matter which game you play. No matter how easy, the better player wins. You give minesweeper a prize pool of 30 million USD, and you will see some serious depth to the games. Besides, wouldn't it be awesome if BW had a lot of players that look like Flash? These players in SC2 are fighting for a huge prize pool. They will find everything that will separate them from the rest of the competition. Maybe its not microing 2 dropships while macroing from 8 barracks now. Maybe it is microing 4 sets of marauder armies at different bases while dropping mules at tanks. People will think of something. When a human is backed into a corner, he has no where to go but through you.
am i the only one who thinks each GSL happen too quickly, i mean one season is ending and they are already making preliminaries for the next.i love OSL and MSL for one reason, there is a time of rest, when no one is playing and that raised a little bit the hype, then when the next seasons come, its all exciting again, i also agree about the map pool, each GSL should have a different map pool or alternations of it, like in bw. either way this isnt looking good for sc2.
There are almost 100,000 vod views for the boxer code s matches alone (on the english site at least), so I don't really think theyre very concerned about popularity. With that many VOD viewers, how many live viewers do you think there were?
On January 07 2011 13:32 mprs wrote: Okay so here is what I take from this. I will comment on the most popular opinions.
1) Give it time.
Duh? Show me a game (or a sport) that became a hit and a sensation in the first 6 months. One great example is Lacrosse. Many cities in Canada and the US have teams, it is sponsored, and sometimes on TV. However, unless its the finals or semi-finals, no one is watching. I would argue that Lacrosse has a much better chance of being a successful (e/sport), or part of the big 4 than BW/SC2 will. There are MANY faults with SC2. Maps, players, strategies, format, tournaments, the whole works. A LOT OF THINGS ARE WRONG. But these are ALL things that can be worked out. Imbalances can be all removed with one "lucky" patch. Think about it. They can literally just press reset on the balance and get a very good product. They also have two expansions to work with. With established team houses, introduction of new maps by Blizzard or GOM is very easy. These things WILL happen, you would have to be an idiot to think that they will not.
It is also stupid to think that if it does not succeed NOW, then it cannot succeed. SC2 is already more successful than BW ever was in every place in the world not named Korea. If they the fix the game 5 years from now and give a very good product, would your response be "WELL YOU DIDN'T DO IT FIVE YEARS AGO, not WATCHING!"? Who knows. It will take time, and it has a lot of time. Look at how long BW developed for. The argument that "well, BW didn't get fed money, so it took longer. SC2 is getting fed money and large tournaments, so it should do well NOW" is mainly false. You can't make that inference, there is nothing to base it on. There is no other game that was treated like this, where you can say "hey look man, game X was fed money and succeeded after 3 months". If Brood War was fed money when it came out, it would have been a disaster and a miserable failure. The game was atrocious when it came out. Throwing money and tournaments at the game doesn't create time out of thin air. The players and developers can't use that money to purchase 50 hour days. They need time to get good, to be perfect, and to be entertaining.
2) Live Audience.
Really? Were we not all watching the TSL and getting super excited about it? How many live viewers did that tournament have? Oh yeah, none. We are in a new age. There is a computer and a TV in every house. Especially for a game like StarCraft, it is much more convenient to watch at the comfort of your own home. Everything is available in VoDs and you can watch whenever you want. Sure the atmosphere of having tens of thousand people is great, but that can be reserved for the finals.
And these online numbers are great. Sponsors are what make the proleagues, KESPA, and the TV networks go 'round. Seeing an advertisement live versus on the computer is pretty much the same. When I watch BW streams, I never see more than 1000 people watching. Minigun (an unknown Protoss until recently) gets 3 times that whenever he wants to stream. Idra gets 3-5k. Huk, Ret, TLO all get 2-4k. Day9 gets about 5k, hits 10k on Mondays. I'm not sure which GSL game it was (it was a Boxer game, probably vs Nada) where the Korean GOM site had 150-170k (corrected) hits for the VOD. That is just Korea. If he was wearing a Coke shirt, they would have seen it just the same. I'd even argue that this is better; GSL no longer attracts Korean sponsors exclusively. With such a global following (which BW never had, or well, a significant one for sponsors), the game has 100x the potential to be something BW could never be. And if you are on this site, you are more often than not (damn you Day9) a non-Korean. This should be very exciting for us that there is an e-sport growing outside of Korea, so we don't have to go to work or school every morning with baggy eyes.
3) Entertainment
SC2 is boring. BW is entertaining. I didn't play SC2, but it is boring. I didn't play BW, but it is entertaining. These statements are all face-palm worthy. Just because you don't find something entertaining, it doesn't mean it isn't. Entertainment is 100% relative, like color preference. You can't be like "You are an idiot, blue is a terrible color". For god's sakes, Jersey Shore is still running. People have different tastes. I don't understand the group that never played BW but enjoy watching it. How did you get into it? You must have played enough to get familiar with the game. Or, you have learned a lot about the game through osmosis (this is probably the case). If you haven't played SC2, and don't find it entertaining, you probably didn't follow it much, and then you don't understand it (which means you can't appreciate it... see what I did here?). This whole subject of "entertaining" needs to go. We need better words to describe this game. I agree that the game probably needs more intense moments like Reaver scarabs or vulture mines. But then again, just 2 days ago, we saw a huge army walking over a baneling bomb that demolished an entire army (not going to say which to avoid spoiler). If that is not exciting, I do not know what is. Blue flame hellions going back to the mineral lines and you know one misclick and workers are goneeee. If there are too many of these things, they lose their appeal. We still have hunter seeker missles to incorporate. People have also been doing very neat things with the warp prism as well.
When we first saw this game, we decided that it was figured out in the beta. How lame, no cool tricks like BW. Everything is straight and boring. Then we found Fazing. Then we found Immortal-Warp prism micro vs roaches. Then we found mass Orbital Commands. Then we found probe going through the double pylon block. I can go on for a while.
4) Conclusion
Success. That is really all I can say for SC2. It has earned the envy of every single game that strives to be competitive. As I write this, there are 30 people streaming. One daily show that covers SC2, and a tournament casted by djWHEAT, one of the most influential e-sports figure of all time. Furthermore, orb, catz, qxc are all drawing in a few thousand people in their streams as well. In a few more hours, there is a tournament ready to commence where THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people all around the world will watch people attempt to achieve Code S, or win the ultimate prize in Code S. In a few weeks, we will hear the release of the new exciting MLG tournaments which hosted SC2 for the first time and had GREAT success. TSL3 with its huge prize pool (for an online tournament) will draw a strong player list and draw a crap ton of viewers. I bet TeamSpeak or PokerStrategy don't really care if these viewers were live or not. I mean I can go on forever, but you get the point. If SC2 dies this June, it will be the most successful E-sport outside of Korea. It already accomplished what games have been trying to do for longer than a decade.
On January 07 2011 10:29 HunterStarcraft wrote: These stats surprised me a lot. GSL is the only SC2 I watch religiously because the total talent pool is way larger than any other event. Their online base + subsbriber revenue must be very significant compared to live attendance. I'm sure popularity overall will grow a lot as more Korean players (and viewers) switch over.
The talent pool is a joke lol. ogsMC's illustrious brood war was him going 1-9 and NesTea was a horrible ~30% Zerg. Until we get real plers in GSL it's gonna be stale. Also you see so many better players getting knocked out by worse players cause the worse player decided to do a 50/50 all in thats ridiculously strong on a map (like 4 warps on delta) and takes skill completely out of the equation. Maps dont help obviously, and shakuras and metal are the only maps i've seen that can consistently deliver interesting games but still, GSL is going to be boring as long as its filled with nothing but brood war rejects and war3 players
SlayerS_BoxeR was a god in BW and he hasn't achieved anything great in SC2, same goes for NaDa, July is in Code A for christ's sake. Talent in BW does not translate directly into talent in SC2. Don't know the real reasons for this, but I'd dare say that even current top BW players would have some difficulties adapting to the game at the beginning. Except jaedong he's too good haha.
Umm... Boxer/Nada/July at this point aren't capable of top level BW games anymore.
If there's any indication of the lack of talent in SC2, it would be that MVP looks like fucking Flash in SC2.
SERIOUSLY, MVP.
The same MVP that got knocked out by some scrub named Choya who is 0-2 in BW? The entire implication is that a lower skill ceiling produces inconsistent and random performance results.
To all the people saying 'give it time': The problem isn't time. GSL popularity is in decline. Time will only exacerbate that decline unless something changes.
Uhh. Negative. The actual game doesn't matter when you talk about X beating Y. It doesn't matter which game you play. No matter how easy, the better player wins. You give minesweeper a prize pool of 30 million USD, and you will see some serious depth to the games. Besides, wouldn't it be awesome if BW had a lot of players that look like Flash? These players in SC2 are fighting for a huge prize pool. They will find everything that will separate them from the rest of the competition. Maybe its not microing 2 dropships while macroing from 8 barracks now. Maybe it is microing 4 sets of marauder armies at different bases while dropping mules at tanks. People will think of something. When a human is backed into a corner, he has no where to go but through you.
Everything is not black and white like that. The point is that it may very well be the case that Starcraft 2 will degenerate into games which are decided the instant one player secures a slight advantage. Hence the current prevalence of timing attacks and two-base play.
I guess what I mean by depth is really strategic variance and diversity which Starcraft 2 seems to currently lack. This may very well change, but it could just as easily not. In fact it appears that the more that Starcraft 2 stabilizes the more boring it is to watch.
On January 07 2011 10:29 HunterStarcraft wrote: These stats surprised me a lot. GSL is the only SC2 I watch religiously because the total talent pool is way larger than any other event. Their online base + subsbriber revenue must be very significant compared to live attendance. I'm sure popularity overall will grow a lot as more Korean players (and viewers) switch over.
The talent pool is a joke lol. ogsMC's illustrious brood war was him going 1-9 and NesTea was a horrible ~30% Zerg. Until we get real plers in GSL it's gonna be stale. Also you see so many better players getting knocked out by worse players cause the worse player decided to do a 50/50 all in thats ridiculously strong on a map (like 4 warps on delta) and takes skill completely out of the equation. Maps dont help obviously, and shakuras and metal are the only maps i've seen that can consistently deliver interesting games but still, GSL is going to be boring as long as its filled with nothing but brood war rejects and war3 players
SlayerS_BoxeR was a god in BW and he hasn't achieved anything great in SC2, same goes for NaDa, July is in Code A for christ's sake. Talent in BW does not translate directly into talent in SC2. Don't know the real reasons for this, but I'd dare say that even current top BW players would have some difficulties adapting to the game at the beginning. Except jaedong he's too good haha.
Umm... Boxer/Nada/July at this point aren't capable of top level BW games anymore.
If there's any indication of the lack of talent in SC2, it would be that MVP looks like fucking Flash in SC2.
SERIOUSLY, MVP.
The same MVP that got knocked out by some scrub named Choya who is 0-2 in BW? The entire implication is that a lower skill ceiling produces inconsistent and random performance results.
To all the people saying 'give it time': The problem isn't time. GSL popularity is in decline. Time will only exacerbate that decline unless something changes.
Uhh. Negative. The actual game doesn't matter when you talk about X beating Y. It doesn't matter which game you play. No matter how easy, the better player wins. You give minesweeper a prize pool of 30 million USD, and you will see some serious depth to the games. Besides, wouldn't it be awesome if BW had a lot of players that look like Flash? These players in SC2 are fighting for a huge prize pool. They will find everything that will separate them from the rest of the competition. Maybe its not microing 2 dropships while macroing from 8 barracks now. Maybe it is microing 4 sets of marauder armies at different bases while dropping mules at tanks. People will think of something. When a human is backed into a corner, he has no where to go but through you.
Skill ceiling still matters, more stuff to do = more stuff to do better. Everyone is on an even playing field in rock paper scissor, tic tac toe, poker and starcraft. There's still plenty of reason to call one game more random/skillfull/skillless than another.
Players will find more crap to do but it will be less important crap for the most part. It's just like short games generally favor the more skilled player the less, more time = more edge to be found.
EPT
