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I am saying that there are 300 current pros and semi-pros that have the potential to come in and dominate SC2 at any moment, with a latency of a few months from the day they switch. Among this group there are a notable few that CRUSH any other players in terms of raw talent and/or work ethic and/or ability to learn. This knowledge cheapens any form of competition I see right now, no matter how much I try to enjoy the games.
I don't really understand the point of this article, other than to say, "Haha, all of the SC2 pros suck. BW rocks!" I'm especially flabbergasted by the below comment:
This knowledge cheapens any form of competition I see right now, no matter how much I try to enjoy the games
Obviously, the current generation of SC2 pros will be worse than their successors, and it is quite likely that many of the dominant players will become second tier as new stars emerge. However, how the hell does that cheapen their play?
Like you said, the current generation of BW pros make the old bonjwa's look like jokes, and would crush them 95% of the time. Because of that, are you saying that Boxer, July, Nada, and Savior's accomplishments were worthless? If the BW scene were to remain strong, I'm sure that a new crop of players would eventually overcome and outclass even Flash and Jaedong. Knowing that, does that "cheapen" their play.
This is true of any sport. A new generation will succeed the old and will most likely surpass them in almost every single way. If you think that having better players in the future makes the current games worthless, then you might as well stop watching b/c I can assure you that, as long as Brood War scene remains strong (this is questionable b/c new players are wary of the living in practice houses purely as practice partners for the stars, so many of them are trying their luck with SC2 instead) , new stars should emerge that will make the current generation of BW stars look amateurish in comparison.
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On May 12 2011 15:26 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2011 14:51 sc14s wrote:On May 12 2011 14:35 Flowjo wrote:On May 12 2011 14:32 sc14s wrote:On May 12 2011 13:52 Zrana wrote:
You didn't mention NaDa or July as much as you should have. Both amazing at sc1 (capable of beating flash/JD at times iirc but not rocking SC2 as hard as you say they should)
Different game, different skills. Mechanics mean slightly less, strategy slightly more. Sure some is transferable, but this really seems like more of the same tired old BW was better whine.
You say that there are hundreds of players who could come in and dominate SC2 at any moment. Well why haven't they? There's nothing to stop them taking the GSL, TSL and NASL prize pools. More than enough incentive.
The answer is that SC2 is still being figured out, and it takes a different sort of player to excel at a young game than a game where the rules have already been written.
Also you imply that SC2 is invalid as a sport until we have some godllike figure like Flash. Was football invalid before Beckham, Formula 1 before Schumacher?
No, they were still fun to watch. (well i dont like football but lots do) ^ what he said not what he said.....2010 Nada or July would not be "capable of beating flash/JD". This entire post actually has alot of misinformation. actually, yes what he said.. i can have my own opinion <.< and on top of that he isnt stating misinformation just an opinion.. which he can also have.. you know the difference right? all he was saying is SC2 is enjoyable REGARDLESS of that fact that the "best" havent swapped yet (if they will ever). Football not having a figure before Beckham is a wrong fact, not an opinion. Same with the Flash/JD vs NaDa/July thing.
do you know what facts and opinions are?
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On May 12 2011 15:11 Popss wrote:
When SC2 came out the BW players who made the switch where all:
1. Inconsistent A-teamers
2. B-teamers
3. Old-schoolers
And those guys are pretty much currently the best players in SC2 while the most talented BW players still play BW.
So in the eyes of long-time BW followers SC2 competition obviously lacks alot of legitimacy.
You can't fault new fans of SC2 to not see it this way though.
I really hate the term "former Brood War professional"-player though since it's so damn misleading since it applies to both Idra and Flash should he ever retire from BW.
This is an endless debate though since people with enough insight into BW to understand the difference between an S-class players and B-teamers won't fully appreciate SC2 competition until said S-class players make the switch while SC2 fans with no BW background will think it's "just mechanics".
This is a very accurate way of putting it.
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I cannot WAIT for my favourite BW players to switch to SC2.
My opinion of this little article is of little importance, because there is not enough information about the transition of BW pro's to SC2, but I do believe that there will be an unforgivingly massive influx of younger, more talented players to SC2 and there is nothing any old school or new school legend can do about that.
In the end, all I really want is for the talented BW players who still compete not to be discouraged at the thought of learning a new and challenging game in Wings of Liberty. As the game evolves and progresses so will players. As long as the right people pay attention to the massive pool of talent still stuck in BW, and are willing to take a chance on them, we will sooner see the skill and talent from those players where it belongs. (in 2011; not 1732) lulz :D
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On May 12 2011 15:28 Two_DoWn wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2011 15:27 Suryp wrote:On May 12 2011 15:14 Crunchums wrote:
Your argument contains a premise that you acknowledge only indirectly - that SC2 is a game where practicing intensely in the manner that BW pros is singularly important to success. A single anecdote potentially supporting this point is not sufficient.
But even if you were completely right that SC2 players aren't training as hard as they could be training and that this makes the competition less fierce, the fact that Flash and Jaedong haven't switched over doesn't make the competition a farce.
To me, this article is just fueling SC2 fans' hatred and misunderstanding of Brood War fans. As someone who's never played Brood War I can attest to this point. If this article was only to say "watch out a shitstorm of better players are coming" then great, let them come. Everything it states beyond that feels like Brood War fanboyism and SC2 hate. Even if everything you say is right, let me live in my naive world where MC and Nestea are amazingly good, okay? The point of the article is to get you out of your naive little world. Hate to break it to you, but he is right.
He is right, but that's a pretty poor way of bringing it across. If someone new to SC was to ask 'who is this Boxer guy, can I see some of his play', would you say 'don't watch his games, he sucks compared to JD/Flash and was only good for his time'? God no, because he was amazing for his time within the context of the game.
Same deal here. The SC2 pros show amazing play within the context of SC2 play, and that's what defines a 'top player' at a given time - and creates what people remember as great games.
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On May 12 2011 15:10 yiodee wrote:
what everybody should get from this article is that IdrA should stop crying about imbalance and start practicing for real. It is hard to believe that a pro that was in korean doesn't believe in practicing because "mechanics are not that important in sc2, i just need to think about the game". LOL
AHhhhhhh that's what this article is for. I was having a lot of trouble understanding... 
No seriously, Intrigue, this writeup is solely intended to discredit all forms of actual Sc2 competition?
Is that really what it's all about? I havent been lurking around enough I guess, because I dont remember seeing a lot (any) posts where people actual declare that skill level in Sc2 is any close to BW.
So please, could you please explain to me why you have found it necessary to write up a whole article to critisize the development of the Sc2 competitive scene?
Dont you get the bigger picure? Sc2 is the next step. It's worldwide E-sports. It's people outside of the community talking about it, it's TV shows.
So what if JD or Flash would rape any Sc2 player? I dont get it.
I find your write up very short-sighted. Also being derogative towards recent Sc2 competitions is a sign of unjustified disrespect towards (even if It wasnt what was intended) a lot of people who have been putting a fuck tone of effort into making this game something big .
Dont take this the wrong way. I understand you opinion, I just find it so reactionary that I dont understand it's on first page of a site which has always battled for the development of E-sports.
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On May 12 2011 15:24 raviy wrote:
Elephants in the room
SC2 pros just aren't that good. Every SC2 game I've watched, I've seen silly mistakes that the best of BW would rarely do. The so-called "best players" cloak that banshee way before they need to. Not noticing the shimmer of cloaked units approaching your base. Letting that group of marines just run into tank fire. Tanks being sieged all at the same time instead of individually sieged to optimize positions. Very rarely are there multiple engagements with each engagement micro'd. Bad engagement decisions. Units not being spread properly. Etc.
SCBW top pros don't switch because they're guaranteed a salary, whereas they would take a high risk in switching to SC2. Few BW pros are likely to make more money playing SC2, and those who would have to overcome the barrier of making a career altering decision. (This is an issue even for players who make little to no money in BW.)
BW skill is clearly transferable to SC2. There's a reason why ex-BW pros are at the top. I love Nada and July, but if you can still do that well in SC2 after having virtually faded from the BW pro scene due to a decline in skill.... well... it can't be that hard. Idra similarly was a B teamer, and look at the success he has in SC2.
SC2 just isn't that popular in Korea. As a result, it's unlikely to attract that much money, and without that money, BW pros don't have that essential incentive to switch.
SC2 pros don't cross-dress. 'Nuff said.
This is just another example of the same poisonous BW vs SC2 rubbish that really drags the scene down for everyone. It makes SC2 fans dislike BW because it's apparently only good for bitter vets, and BW fans dislike SC2 because they consider it 'inferior'.
Perhaps giving the game more time, and considering that the two games are, in fact, very different games for a whole multitude of reasons would stop people making posts like this that are just so irritatingly arrogant.
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United Arab Emirates1141 Posts
Nailed it OP, Thank you for writing this article, must've taken you hours. Well done!
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On May 12 2011 15:27 dredd276 wrote:
OP's theory would predict that the crazy-good "outliers" in WC3 would dominate BW too. Grubby, Moon, Lyn? Mixed results...
woah there buddy, wc3 and sc2 are entirely different beasts. wc3 heroes/items/xp system makes it really, really unique. sc2/bw are much more similar.
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It seems that the comparison of the games of sc2 vs bw are irrelevant.
Rather, compare the raw talent, willpower, and work ethics of bw players vs sc2 players. There is little to no comparison outside of SlayerS. It is only a matter of time as SC2 grows for it to attract more higher quality players.
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is awesome32274 Posts
On May 12 2011 15:27 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2011 15:23 IntoTheWow wrote:
I hate making comparisons, but I hope you will let this one slide. In BW when we see a pro make big mistake, we laugh at them. Jaehoon is a running joke in all match ups, sKyHigh can't play a TvZ for his life, etc. In sc2, I don't know if it's the casters, the general consensus or what, but sometimes I see forum posts (maybe they just hold onto something a commentator said) saying "such beautiful micro", when you see mistakes. This is totally fair, but I feel you're generalizing a bit. I think most blatant micro errors get hammered just as much as they do in BW - it's just that the 'general' ones aren't picked out because they're not as noticeable or significant. By contrast, there's definitely some fantastic micro (marine control vs banelings) that would have been praised in a BW LR thread if it was from an OSL.
Then I must be really really unlucky, because whenever I watch I see praise for stuff that looks either "normal" or actually has mistakes (I see this with banshee control a lot for example).
It's hard to not generalize without going through a shit ton of vods and picking case by case, so I apologize for that, but I hope people still see my point. I don't think people should be focusing so much on that "if Flash/JD switched" line so much, but actually on the other parts are mentioned (which have more to be dicussed, and actually mean something to the future of sc2).
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very excellent article. loved the read. hope there are more like this in future!
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On May 12 2011 15:10 darmousseh wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2011 14:55 GolemMadness wrote:On May 12 2011 14:48 darmousseh wrote:On May 12 2011 14:37 KWik-E wrote:
I feel like the point of this article is to belittle the achievements of the SC2 champions. I feel like the article doesn't address the fact that most of these people who have switched over after having relatively unsuccessful BW careers most likely approached this new game with a work ethic and mind set that they most likely didn't have in their mediocre BW experience. ^^ This reflects my thoughts about the article. Just because they aren't the best RTS gamers in the world should it change anything. In sports, many great athletes choose one sport over another. For example, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player and some of the same athleticism would transfer over to baseball, but it's not 1-1. I think having talent spread out among multiple games is important for ESPORTS. Obviously the best thing for sc2 would be to have the best talent, but I don't think that any pros or any fans of sc2 care right now. The only people that really care about scbw players switching over are those who don't want them to switch over. It would be great to have jaedong, flash, bisu for sure, but I will enjoy watching Nestea, MVP, and MC instead. In the end, I don't understand the point of this article. So Top level bw players haven't switched over and so the best players in sc2 are mid level bw players. Ok, and? Your point as quoted is I am saying that there are 300 current pros and semi-pros that have the potential to come in and dominate SC2 at any moment, with a latency of a few months from the day they switch. Among this group there are a notable few that CRUSH any other players in terms of raw talent and/or work ethic and/or ability to learn. This knowledge cheapens any form of competition I see right now, no matter how much I try to enjoy the games. If the Top 500 football(american) players suddenly switched to soccer, we suddenly would forget the names of the current best soccer players (assuming the transfer of skills is the same as bw/sc2, which it's close enough). Yes that's true, but that doesn't make me think "Oh geez, I don't like soccer because the best athletes are playing american football so I should just watch american football instead". They are different games and while they are related, no one should ever see an "elephant in the room". When I talk to casual fans of watching sc2 I don't say "man, this would be so much better if flash was playing", take sc2 as it is and enjoy it, without any elephants. ...Are you serious? You think that a sport that's only really played in two countries has the best athletes on the planet and the athletes of a sport that's by far the most popular on the planet are inferior? Do you ACTUALLY think this? American football is the #1 sport in the US and all of the best athletes go to play it and IF football was suddenly cancelled and the football players all went to play soccer instead, then yes, the United States would win every single world cup. There is a book about it called Soccernomics if you enjoy reading about sports. Also it's just an analogy, but it's the closest one i can think of.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Let's forget for a moment that the only active player on the field of an American Football team uses his foot, and that he uses it in a way which is a very small part of being a Soccer player. Let's forget about that and the fact that all of these players would lack the necessary foot dexterity to play Soccer.
The biggest reason why all of these American Football players would fail at Soccer is because their focus in training has never been endurance running, but sprinting. Football has on average 11 minutes of playtime. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406.html
Soccer is a minimum of 90 minutes. Sprinting is important in Soccer as well, but endurance is much more important seeing as you can't sub out all of the players, you have a max of 3 subs per game, so the majority of your players are going to be running for the full 90 minutes.
It is not comparable at all, which is why your analogy is terrible. I don't really want to comment on the BroodWar and SC2 situation since frankly I am not that familiar with BroodWar. I can find points of argument on either sides, but it really doesn't matter because of my lack of BroodWar knowledge. But I had to comment on your analogy because it is so awful, it actually makes me a little angry that you would write something so ill informed.
Also, not all of the best athletes go to play American Football. That is also ill informed. It takes a different type of skill to play Football than it does to play Basketball, and that it does to play Tennis. All of these different pro sports players have talent, but the reasons they chose their sports could be because they like them, or their talent is more suited to what is desired in that sport, or maybe that was the thing that they played when they were kids. You have literally 0 basis for deciding that all of the best athletes in the U.S. play American Football. It would be literally impossible to find out who all of the best athletes in the U.S. are.
Analogies have to have internal logic to be useful.
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It's hard to take this article seriously because I need a goddamn chainsaw to hack through all the Brood War bias bullshit. SC2 is a different game, there's literally no evidence that if BW pros switched they would automatically start raping everyone. They might. Hell they probably would, but you can't know for sure unless they actually switch. Even if they did switch and stomp, that doesn't prove anything other than those players like Flash are amazing. But you already knew that.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On May 12 2011 15:27 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2011 15:23 IntoTheWow wrote:
I hate making comparisons, but I hope you will let this one slide. In BW when we see a pro make big mistake, we laugh at them. Jaehoon is a running joke in all match ups, sKyHigh can't play a TvZ for his life, etc. In sc2, I don't know if it's the casters, the general consensus or what, but sometimes I see forum posts (maybe they just hold onto something a commentator said) saying "such beautiful micro", when you see mistakes. This is totally fair, but I feel you're generalizing a bit. I think most blatant micro errors get hammered just as much as they do in BW - it's just that the 'general' ones aren't picked out because they're not as noticeable or significant. By contrast, there's definitely some fantastic micro (marine control vs banelings) that would have been praised in a BW LR thread if it was from an OSL.
The thing is, in BW, it's a lot easier to forgive silly mistakes by pros, because you can easily see that they aren't just doing one thing or having to do army control or whatever. If Flash loses a couple marines cause he wasn't careful about lurkers...he's probably also dropping a place and also attacking another at once. You see mistakes being made all the time, but it gets "made up" so to say. In addition, generally these mistakes aren't super super big, and even if they are, the nature of the game allows you to recover. I feel like this isn't the case in SC2, but I guess we'll see.
Unless if it's Jaehoon.
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On May 12 2011 15:29 Kar98 wrote:
I thought TL discouraged the BW vs SC2 stuff, but with this article being published I can only see the opposite :/
I don't see this article as a BW vs SC2 at all, it simply states facts that are known by the majority. I'm not on either side, I love both games really just equally, but I'm also aware (as most should be) that SC2 is currently not even close to as exciting and as developed as BW. Which is entirely normal for a game that's just about 1 year old compared to another that has seen an extension and countless patches.
Anyway, really great read, I agree on most points. One that isn't mentioned though, is that some players do better at one game than another, and while everything is "easier" mechanics-wise in SC2, it leaves more room (logically) for strategic thinking and army micro, and some players that might have shined thanks to their superior macro in BW may not do so well in SC2.
But obviously, players like JD/Flash are a nobrainer, 1 month of practice and they'd be on top just that easily.
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This is well argued, although I'm not entirely certain what the point you're trying to make is - I don't think anyone who follows SC2 would claim that the level of play is anywhere close to SC2's potential.
However, you're missing a fundamental point: SCBW places a relatively larger focus on mechanics than SC2 does. As I have said like 4 other times in other threads (only to be drowned out by people who didnt even understand my argument), all RTS games (and, really, all games in general) exist on a continuum between execution skills (mechanics) and strategic skills (strategy, obviously).
To make this clear, imagine a game that was in all respects identical to SCBW except you had to actively micro workers to make them do a mining trip, every single time - you couldn't just tell them to mine and they'd mine (albeit not perfectly). Could players achieve the same level of macro as they do in SCBW now?
I suspect the answer is probably yes, but it comes with a corollary point - there is absolutely no way they could do it while at the same time executing all the other glorious micro we have come to expect. The need to constantly micro workers to get any income at all imposes an arbitrary extra requirement on players to achieve fundamental goals necessary to execute strategies.
At this point, I hope people would agree with me so far - if you don't, one of us had made a fairly fundamental mistake, since this point is tautological.
I need to make a second point to get this argument to come together, so leave that to the side for now. The second point is that any given individual player has an absolute limit on how much he can do. Perhaps talent plays a role, certainly work ethic plays a role, but at some point there is an absolute physical limitation on the amount of APM any given player can put out. Yes, it probably varies depending on the kind of action and its difficulty, but thats not relevant - the point is, when a player sits down to play a game, they have a certain amount of multitasking ability, a certain amount of APM they could possibly output.
Lets assume a player sits down to play my imaginary version of SCBW. In order to do pretty much anything, he has to spend a lot of time managing his workers so he has an income. Lets say that for him to do it at 50% efficiency (i.e. perfect management generates twice the income) takes 50% of his time, 50% of his APM. He has 50% left to do other stuff, like micro, or what have you.
The same player doesn't have to spend that time/APM to achieve an identical result in the real SCBW, so it takes 0% of his time (for the sake of simplicity).
Lets assume further that a second, different player has put in so much work that he can achieve 50% efficient mining in the imaginary SCBW with only 20% of his time/APM. He has 80% of it left to execute everything else, or he can put in 40% of his time and get 100% efficient mining.
Can anyone really tell me that the second player isn't at a massive advantage against the first in the imaginary version of SCBW? His mechanical skill gives him twice the income of the first player and he still has a larger percentage of his APM/time available to him. The first player could be a strategic genius the likes of which this world couldn't even comprehend and it wouldn't matter because he couldn't execute certain strategies as a result of his mechanics.
Games like golf focus almost exclusively on mechanical skill - if you can putt well, drive well, and hit consistent shots, you're most of the way there. In Chess, it doesn't matter if you can actually move a piece in 1 second or 10 (for the most part) - what matters is the quality of your decisions, your strategy.
Neither game is objectively better. They focus on entirely different types of skill. The Golf/Chess comparison is the most obvious one to me, but a comparison between speed chess and regular chess works too - there is not all that much reason to believe that the best player in the world at speed chess is the best player in the world at chess with no time limit.
MBS and the other UI improvements make the execution of basic mechanical necessities of a strategy easier than it would be without them, in SCBW. Thus, an individual player's strategic aptitude is relatively more important than it is in SCBW. Players who are "carried" by their mechanics in SCBW cannot expect an identical level of success in SC2.
If you've read this far, thanks ^_^. A final disclaimer: by no means do I wish to suggest Flash and Jaedong would not be capable of dominating SC2 - I am of the opinion that talent has nothing to do with it and work input is all that matters. But they will not dominate SC2 by virtue of their SCBW skill alone. Their mechanics will make them able to pick up SC2 faster, as they can dispense with learning mechanics and so forth, but they will have to adapt to a game with a larger portion of the game-space occupied by strategy. Perhaps SC2 is simply a shallower game, in which case they can probably waltz in and dominate instantly, but I suspect it is not, and I suspect they cannot.
Further, as Idra has implied in some of his comments, when mechanics are less important, rote practice is less important as well. There is little reason to suspect that simply porting SCBW practice routines to SC2 with no modification will be optimal.
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On May 12 2011 15:29 Kar98 wrote:
I thought TL discouraged the BW vs SC2 stuff, but with this article being published I can only see the opposite :/
Heh it's discouraged if it is pro SC2, if it's got a pro BW bias it's completely cool. Look at that "what is SC2 missing" thread http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=213083
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It would be horrible to think that people who switch sports could actually improve and become better? There's so many variables that could change how bad MC (or any mediocre BW player) was doing in BW to how good he's doing in SC2 beside just BW experience. Some athletes don't really do well until they grow up a bit, some do extremely well at a early age then tire and slack of and some do well in a new environment with a different kind of practice. As a ex-pro swimmer i've seen all these things and 100 more affect how pros develop.
Even if the competition isn't at the BW level i'm having a blast watching foreginers play versus koreans and great english speaking tournaments popping up everywhere. If the old BW pros want to keep their slight advantage in SC2 they're going to need to work at it, cause with so much money on the line dedicated people WILL develop new skills.
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awesomest article i've read on teamliqudnet, ever.
sc2 is different from bw, however, if you're were good in bw, you'll be good in sc2 (from pros to casuals). same will apply to exceptional players like jd and flash.
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EPT
