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On October 07 2015 09:41 Azarkon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2015 09:26 Amarok wrote:
In fairness to Monte he's always been extremely sceptical about the China crowd bigging up and/or excusing flaws with the Chinese scene. That said, I agree he regularly glosses over similar flaws in the Korean scene.
I think the key thing people have missed with China is that LoL has evolved more and more into a game that is won by teams over individuals and comms are crucial to good teamplay. Sure Pawn, Imp, Rookie, Kakao, Deft et al are phenomenal players but it doesn't matter if communication is less than perfect at an absolutely crucial moment. Note, I said "less then perfect" instead of "bad". You only need players to react a call a split second later and an opportunity is missed or a fight is lost. Throw in a scene that manages to put players like TBQ and Kitties on teams that are supposed to be contenders and inconsistent coaching structures and it's easy to see why they'd be inconsistent at best.
I hope this year will be a wake up call for people like Monte/Moser who have absolute faith in the superiority of their scene. Even if a Korean team ends up winning the whole thing, teams like Origen and C9 look very competitive, as have Fnatic over the course of the year (though I'm not convinced they're dead just yet). Between the skimming of the Korean scene and China being China it's easy to understand why things are closer to reaching parity. MonteCristo's main problem is that he over values individual skill and what he thinks is "proper play," but which in fact is just the way top Koreans play. He's rarely been able to see what's exceptional about the play independent of the region it comes from. This has resulted in him, for example, not taking seriously what Korean coaches were saying with respect to European teams advancing the meta this year.With SKT playing the same line ups CLG and Fnatic are playing, and which we saw earlier in LCS, this strategy must have come from EU/NA, and must have beaten SKT in scrims, leading to them taking it up. Yet, were it up to MonteCristo, we'd only hear about how advanced the Korean teams' plays are, and how bad everyone in EU/NA - except Fnatic - is because their region is so shit that their strategy doesn't even matter.
You mean the same shit that Korean players and coaches say every single year despite Koreans consistently stomping Western teams?
Your 20/20 hindsight off a single week of play at World's despite 3.5 seasons of international play and predictions is hilarious.
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You guys so upset about media members having incorrect assumptions/predictions/etc must never have watched actual sports before. There is a nothing new or exceptional about [everyone including those on camera] having biases, ignorance, and/or incomplete information but pushing on like that isn't the case.
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On October 07 2015 09:39 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2015 09:35 Azarkon wrote:On October 07 2015 08:45 cLutZ wrote:On October 07 2015 08:13 Saradin wrote:On October 07 2015 08:01 Amarok wrote:On October 07 2015 07:47 Saradin wrote:
Think of reddit. Think of how people react to a western win or defeat, or a non-western win or defeat. Think of how people evaluate their region's historical performances, then contrast to how they evaluate other regions'. The differences in general attitude are really noticable if you're not already part of the echo chamber. One example: compare evaluations of Taiwan's s3-s4's stretch of godawful international performance to NA's s2-s3 stretch of absolute dogshit + s4's 'YEA, WE GOT TWO TEAMS OUT OF GROUPS AND THEN PROMPTLY GOT DESTROYED RIGHT AFTERWARD, WOOOOO'. The former tends to get trashed; the latter gets s2-s3 glossed over while s4 is treated as a fucking point of pride.
Or even more extreme, think of the demographic lolesports caters to. The problem is you're contrasting casual western fans with Chinese analysts and experts, specifically the English speaking ones that have been talking about China having the best teams in the world. No one's shitting on the opinions of the casual fan on QQ (or whatever social media platform most of the LoL discussion runs through) because most of us can't read it and it'd probably be the level of discussion seen on Reddit/facebook anyway. From what I've seen western analysts/experts have been pretty reasonable about the highs/lows of their scene(s). I'm not? I was responding to 'proponents' as 'people in general talking' as opposed to experts/analysts only. Then your post is really confusing/misleading because I had the same reaction to it as Amarok. Chinese "Experts" billed LGD/EDG as 2 of the top 3 teams here, and iG being somewhere between 4 and 7. Non-Chinese experts largely trusted these evaluations and maybe threw Fanatic or CLG into their top 5. The other problem is this is a systemic problem of the Chinese scene (with the rare exception of MSI). They are almost certainly why, for instance, GodV was #3 on the list, last year Namei was similarly ranked. Or, even in their own scene they are continually delusional, even as 4 of the top 4 6 of the top 6 (sorry, corrected when fact checking) teams in the LPL had the max # of Koreans in their active rosters. This has been a persistent problem with Western analysis of the Chinese scene in general, across all eSports - they simply don't know what's going on, so they base their analysis strictly on past results and the stereotype of "Asians are skilled at games and try very hard in them, therefore they must > West gamers who are all casual and lazy." The sole exception to the image of Asian professionalism in eSports is that it is not applied to Southeast Asia due to their repeatedly bad results. The first time this stereotype was challenged in Dota 2, people were completely caught off guard, same as this year in LoL. It turned out, in that case, that both the "experts" and the public had formed such an uniform opinion of East > West that they were willing to believe whatever was fed to them, such that arguments that went against all logic - eg "it is healthy for a scene to have no new players, because it shows how skilled the veterans are" became the standard. Again, same as in LoL, whereby the LPL people were saying that the LPL's poor practice culture was ultimately irrelevant because the individual players were so damn talented, and that playing randomly was as effective as playing tactically because who needs to rotate when you can just fight? The learning experience, in this case, was necessary for Dota 2 analysis to move beyond the simple idea that Western gamers were casual screw ups while Asian gamers were try hard professionals and that this won't ever change. As it turned out, Chinese players were just as casual and lazy as Western players - and the "experts" simply failed their job. With LoL, I imagine and hope this year will be a similar learning experience. I don't even know how you can even spout the shit you're saying after the results of s2-s4, with the sharp rise of Korean play the second Korean servers came up. Not to mention the historical team-fighting strength of Chinese teams consistently being able to beat Western teams at Worlds. Just because the first week of Worlds in S5 proves some form of contradiction (btw, EDG is still repping China very well, and SKT still dominant), doesn't mean all of China's experts are useless.
I haven't said a word about the analysis of the Korean scene, which to a degree is accurate, though heavily based on Korea's past eSports achievements than any understanding of the scene today. As for the "historical team-fighting strength of Chinese teams" beating Western teams at worlds, I'd observe that no one actually said the Chinese were going to out fight the Western teams till they did - ie it wasn't a case of "experts" understanding the scene; it was description of what happened.
On October 07 2015 09:49 wei2coolman wrote:
You mean the same shit that Korean players and coaches say every single year despite Koreans consistently stomping Western teams?
Your 20/20 hindsight off a single week of play at World's despite 3.5 seasons of international play and predictions is hilarious.
Except they didn't say the same every year. Remember Dade's "no Korean team is going to lose to a Western team" during S3? There were years during which the Koreans actually believed their own meta was ahead. But not this year.
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S2 had (close to) parity between the regions because no one was particularly structured. EU (M5), China (WE), Korea (Frost) and SEA (TPA) all at teams that were arguably the best in the world at some point that season. That season can't be used as an example of anyone's superiority.
Korea was so dominant in S3 and S4 because no one had anywhere near their level of professionalism and structure they did, combined with an incredible talent pool. The rest of the world just got by on whatever raw talent and knowledge they had and in an environment like that it's easy to see why China would come out second (though I don't think the gap between China and the West was very wide in S4). But it's not like that anymore. With the possible exception of Pain/BKT every team has a wealth of structure around them in terms of coaching/analysts/support staff. Skilled teams with internal issues and/or poor structure are going to be challenged by better organised/prepared teams and results are going to be far more variable as a result.
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I don't understand how people are calling this "shitting on China" when it's more a re-evaluation of the relative rankings of teams, which as logical or empirical people, we should do. The opposite is to say Chinese still #1 and we'll just ignore all new data, and that's just ignorant.
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The land of freedom23126 Posts
On October 07 2015 09:27 wei2coolman wrote:
You guys needs to learn about independence of decision making regardless of outcome.
As far as LGD situation, Monte did highlight how he found it hilarious how all the Chinese experts made LGD their favorite to win Worlds despite massive coaching clusterfuck prior to Worlds, I guess he just thought LGD's rawskills regardless of TBQ and coaching clusterfuck would still manage to lose to Western teams.
LGD never needed a coach, this whole bullshit is overrated.
Pyl almost lead team which could be barely top-10 in LPL 2015 to Worlds last year, just by holding their hands.
Are we going to proclaim Homme now as problem for Samsung Ozone at S3 Worlds despite him coaching them to World Championship next year, lol.
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On October 07 2015 10:06 Amarok wrote:
But it's not like that anymore. With the possible exception of Pain/BKT every team has a wealth of structure around them in terms of coaching/analysts/support staff. Skilled teams with internal issues and/or poor structure are going to be challenged by better organised/prepared teams and results are going to be far more variable as a result.
This is an excellent example, actually.
The increase in professionalism among Western teams has largely been overlooked by "experts" in that it does not play into their analysis despite their being informed of the development. People such as MonteCristo, the Riot people, etc. all know that Western teams have increased both their level of practice and their infrastructure, but they are so set in their stereotype built on past results that they never think it is enough to overcome what Asian teams have, despite the fact that when they argue about why Asian teams > Western teams, that's what they bring up in the first place.
Thus, the fact that LGD was playing without a coach for months and is going to play with a new coach at worlds, to MonteCristo, is only enough to set them back against SKT and EDG, but would have no effect on the "fact" that they'd destroy Western teams with 2-3x the coaching staff. Moser & co. didn't even bring up LGD and IG's lack of practice going into worlds, despite every top Western team boot camping for a month+, because in their mind no amount of practice is ever going to make up for the difference that was already there.
This is what I'm talking about when I say that there is a severe lack of logic among "experts" of LoL.
Provided you're going to argue that Western LoL is behind Asian LoL because of X, Y, and Z, then when Western LoL obtains X, Y, and Z, you have to actually take it into account, not ignore it.
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I think with LGD people (myself included) overlooked all that because there was an assumption that Homme would actually be the coach in everything but name and on stage pick/ban. I certainly hadn't heard anything about massive internal strife in the team, but it seems like Homme leaving might have been the symptom of a deeper problem.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the practice culture thing, if true, would be a block against extrapolating chinese teams' worlds performance backwards. with the new patch and different regional strats, the slacker region fell off hard. doesnt mean the level of play in that league was not at one point high. it is just not very professional. weber sense
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On October 07 2015 10:06 Amarok wrote:
S2 had (close to) parity between the regions because no one was particularly structured. EU (M5), China (WE), Korea (Frost) and SEA (TPA) all at teams that were arguably the best in the world at some point that season. That season can't be used as an example of anyone's superiority.
Korea was so dominant in S3 and S4 because no one had anywhere near their level of professionalism and structure they did, combined with an incredible talent pool. The rest of the world just got by on whatever raw talent and knowledge they had and in an environment like that it's easy to see why China would come out second (though I don't think the gap between China and the West was very wide in S4). But it's not like that anymore. With the possible exception of Pain/BKT every team has a wealth of structure around them in terms of coaching/analysts/support staff. Skilled teams with internal issues and/or poor structure are going to be challenged by better organised/prepared teams and results are going to be far more variable as a result.
You know, and that the rest of the regions poached talent of all sorts out of Korea. I mean imagine these NA/EU/CN teams without imports, while also unable to utilize 2+ top veteran players from most positions, and just complete decimation of their top jungle talent (top 3, plus 2-3 raw talents). That they have more than one competent team at worlds is astounding.
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Tbh, about china, I am surpised they lost as much as they did. I'm not surprised about the way they did, by bad p/b and macro play.
I don't mind anything, as long as skt wins 
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Counter Logic Gaming > KOO Tigers
Flash Wolves > paiN Gaming
KOO Tigers > paiN Gaming
Flash Wolves < Counter Logic Gaming
KOO Tigers > Flash Wolves
paiN Gaming < Counter Logic Gaming
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Monte's analysis has been overvalued because Korean dominance has been de facto for two seasons straight. So because he is the korean caster and markets himself as "classy high-minded gentleman", as well as because to a lot of western fans he was the predictor of Samsung White and SKT T1 K's wins at Worlds, people have had this illusion of his opinion as scripture.
Unfortunately, he hasn't anticipated or accurately adjusted his own predictions and analysis according to what we can see as the weakening of Korea due to the Korean exodus.
Stuff like constantly basing predictions between Korean teams and western teams on Korean team is better so the star players of that team must be on a whole other level individually. "Smeb is just going to wipe the floor with all of the teams at IEM Katowice". GE Tigers proceeds to lose to a team with Aluka. I've been critical of Monte and his and the people he associates with's styles of analysis for a long time, and I'm hopeful they will learn something, but I'm doubtful.
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On October 07 2015 11:11 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2015 10:06 Amarok wrote:
S2 had (close to) parity between the regions because no one was particularly structured. EU (M5), China (WE), Korea (Frost) and SEA (TPA) all at teams that were arguably the best in the world at some point that season. That season can't be used as an example of anyone's superiority.
Korea was so dominant in S3 and S4 because no one had anywhere near their level of professionalism and structure they did, combined with an incredible talent pool. The rest of the world just got by on whatever raw talent and knowledge they had and in an environment like that it's easy to see why China would come out second (though I don't think the gap between China and the West was very wide in S4). But it's not like that anymore. With the possible exception of Pain/BKT every team has a wealth of structure around them in terms of coaching/analysts/support staff. Skilled teams with internal issues and/or poor structure are going to be challenged by better organised/prepared teams and results are going to be far more variable as a result. You know, and that the rest of the regions poached talent of all sorts out of Korea. I mean imagine these NA/EU/CN teams without imports, while also unable to utilize 2+ top veteran players from most positions, and just complete decimation of their top jungle talent (top 3, plus 2-3 raw talents). That they have more than one competent team at worlds is astounding.
Yeah that's fair. Some of that talent wasn't refined before it came to the west (Huni/Rush) but on the whole the S tier got skimmed off the top of Korea and that's always going to weaken a region. Incidentally you could make a similar case for EU, though obviously on a much smaller scale.
Really though, in S3/4 most people would have said that the best Western teams would have been in the 4-8 range if they played in OGN. It sort of makes sense that we're getting close to parity given you've got 2-3 teams worth of S tier Koreans playing in other scenes.
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On October 07 2015 10:15 oo_Wonderful_oo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2015 09:27 wei2coolman wrote:
You guys needs to learn about independence of decision making regardless of outcome.
As far as LGD situation, Monte did highlight how he found it hilarious how all the Chinese experts made LGD their favorite to win Worlds despite massive coaching clusterfuck prior to Worlds, I guess he just thought LGD's rawskills regardless of TBQ and coaching clusterfuck would still manage to lose to Western teams. LGD never needed a coach, this whole bullshit is overrated. Pyl almost lead team which could be barely top-10 in LPL 2015 to Worlds last year, just by holding their hands. Are we going to proclaim Homme now as problem for Samsung Ozone at S3 Worlds despite him coaching them to World Championship next year, lol.
Also homme can't really coach properly considering he's not allowed backstage in between sets.
IMHO LGD was 4th in my rankings prior to worlds. I had SKT, EDG, and KT above LGD. With TBQ, LGD has 0 chance beating a team with a world-tier jungler, much less being able to beat multiple of them in a row without massive luck.
Was not ready for LGD to drop their shit harder than Britany Spears public breakdown.
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I really wanted LGD to atleast make the finals. It would've been cool to see an org reach the finals in both dota2 and LoL.
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On October 07 2015 10:16 Azarkon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 07 2015 10:06 Amarok wrote:
But it's not like that anymore. With the possible exception of Pain/BKT every team has a wealth of structure around them in terms of coaching/analysts/support staff. Skilled teams with internal issues and/or poor structure are going to be challenged by better organised/prepared teams and results are going to be far more variable as a result. This is an excellent example, actually. The increase in professionalism among Western teams has largely been overlooked by "experts" in that it does not play into their analysis despite their being informed of the development. People such as MonteCristo, the Riot people, etc. all know that Western teams have increased both their level of practice and their infrastructure, but they are so set in their stereotype built on past results that they never think it is enough to overcome what Asian teams have, despite the fact that when they argue about why Asian teams > Western teams, that's what they bring up in the first place. Thus, the fact that LGD was playing without a coach for months and is going to play with a new coach at worlds, to MonteCristo, is only enough to set them back against SKT and EDG, but would have no effect on the "fact" that they'd destroy Western teams with 2-3x the coaching staff. Moser & co. didn't even bring up LGD and IG's lack of practice going into worlds, despite every top Western team boot camping for a month+, because in their mind no amount of practice is ever going to make up for the difference that was already there. This is what I'm talking about when I say that there is a severe lack of logic among "experts" of LoL. Provided you're going to argue that Western LoL is behind Asian LoL because of X, Y, and Z, then when Western LoL obtains X, Y, and Z, you have to actually take it into account, not ignore it.
That has more to do that there aren't any standouts in korean or china and that's what happens when talent runs over to china because of money.
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Really though, in S3/4 most people would have said that the best Western teams would have been in the 4-8 range if they played in OGN. It sort of makes sense that we're getting close to parity given you've got 2-3 teams worth of S tier Koreans playing in other scenes.
Yes and the results during international tournaments in S5 supported the thesis that Koreans weren't that good.
Now naturally you have SKT which is a level above, however going into Worlds I don't think it made sense to consider Koo Tigers and KT huge favourites vs Origen and CLG.
Monte's analysis has been overvalued because Korean dominance has been de facto for two seasons straight. So because he is the korean caster and markets himself as "classy high-minded gentleman", as well as because to a lot of western fans he was the predictor of Samsung White and SKT T1 K's wins at Worlds, people have had this illusion of his opinion as scripture.
While I don't think Monte is a bad analyst (in fact closer to the opposite), I've noticed several flaws with some of his logic. Some of it is simply due to a lack of statistical knowledge. E.g the idea that TSM would likely go 0-6 in the group was an example there (hint: according to bookmaker odds there was like a 10% chance at most of that being the case).
Another issue is that - like most sports/esports fans - will overvalue specific occurances. For instance, throughout the spring split Monte referred to Huni as a "good" EU midlaner, but when he made that 1v2 outplay vs SKT when he was dived under tower, he became a worldclass toplaner in Monte's eyes.
He kept doing that until Huni and Reignover wanted to dive Soaz 2v1 during the LCS EU final and Soaz made an outplay. Suddenly his assesment was that Huni had fallen off this split and that Soaz was the best EU toplaner. That's despite the fact that Soaz making a ton of mistakes and overcommitals during that final.
From my perspective I actaully thought Huni's summersplit was marginally better than his spring split, and Monte hasn't been specific to why Huni was worse during the split aside from his play during the final.
His worst bias is, however, his overvaluation of teams utilizing the playstyle he enjoys. Teams that play very aggressive will be figured out and are bad. FNC going 4-0 in the spring split? Nah they will be figured out and won't make top 5 at the end of the split.....
And because he didn't like Gravity, TL or TIP, all of C9's wins over them in the Gauntlett were meaning less. According to Monte C9 just beat bad teams and those we should still consider C9 to be a bad team as well.
On the other hand, the objective way to evaluate C9 is to asses them based on the fact that they beat the 3rd best, 4th best and 5th best NA team in bo5 series rather than dismissing the results because of them being "strategically bad".
Part of Monte's "problem" is that he watches games in terms of quality rather than quantity. Thus when he analyzes a game he goes very deep into that specific game and rates the players based on how well they did that game. He will maintain that assesment until the next time he watches the team play and sees something that directly contradicts his original viewpoint.
On the other hand, I think it makes more sense to look at both quantity and quality. Like how often does Huni and Soaz actually make these 1v2 outplays? If it almos never happens, then why change your opinion completely in the rare cases it does happen?
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Also just a little unrelated vent: But I really hate how everyone in this community refers to "analysts" as a verification that a prediction justified.
Whenever a gone wrong, people have a tendency to excuse them selves with "yeh but every analysts thought that before XX that team YY would get stomped/dominate"
First of, why would an analyst be needed to think that LGD and IG would perform better? You don't even have to have watched a single game of LPL to identify that the top chinese teams have the strongest rosters, so obviously we should expect them to go out of their groups. This is just 2+2 logic and the whole "every analyst I talked/heard to said..." is driving me nuts. Stop giving them so much credit!
Somehow people think that analysts are expert in making predictions and evaluating team strenght. From my experience, analysts are typically pretty bad at this because rather than looking at data/results (objective facts), they wanna base their assesment upon "strategical knowledge". And 99% of the time that just leads to a huge bias in the prediction.
What analysts are good at is explaining the strategies of the team and theoritizing about alternative strategies, but they have no qualifications in making predictions.
You literraly have Monte predicting KT will win over SKT despite SKT being a 75-25 favourite from the bookmakers (whom actually are the real experts here).
Why is noone talking about bookmaker odds at all in this community when it comes to who are the favourites? They actually do that in real sports all the time.
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I'm actually worried for C9 for this second half of groupstages. Hai has been repeating "we're good" with such insistence that something doesn't feel right to me. When you're actually better than your opposition that's not how you act ; you keep calm because victory is what you expected and there is no reason to get excited. Hai trying to use these results to scream "C9 is good" every time he gets the opportunity makes me think that he is very surprised by his team's performance and cannot predict if the hot streak will go on or not.
Same thing for Faker by the way, his big smile after winning against EDG, and his bashing on Chinese teams ("I'd bet money that a Chinese team won't win Worlds over a Western team") are worrying signs, especially coming from a team like SKTT1 who has always kept its composure in the past.
These signs make me think that, although China's terrible performance is hilarious and, I've got to say, quite delicious to me, week 1 in general might be a gigantic fluke.
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EPT
