On June 04 2013 06:17 packrat386 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 06:13 Thieving Magpie wrote:On June 04 2013 02:54 Nebuchad wrote:On June 04 2013 02:29 SiroKO wrote:
Makes no sense to call this competition an American tournament if non-Americans can participate in it.
Guess the US Open is a shitty name for a tennis tournament, then. On June 04 2013 02:29 SiroKO wrote:
Would be funny if French swimmers could qualify to the Olympics from African countries, or other non-sense like this, in the name of "athletical prowess".
Happens relatively often with the saudi and qatari representatives, actually. But hey, let's ignore that. Athletes in the olympics are representatives of their nations, they have medal counts and they compete on a national level. Starcraft is on a much more individual level. When a korean beats a foreigner, nobody goes like, "YEAH KOREA". Yet some people are happy, because they happen to know and like the player that won. In that type of scene, it makes a lot more sense to try and unite the best possible players, and a lot less sense to go national. Every Olympics the NHL teams break apart and each player plays for their "home country." Right and this isn't the olympics. Its a global league with sattelite qualifiers. Starstruck has finally won me over but people really need to start realizing that there are part of a larger qualification structure. Think of WCS AM as the America Based Qualifier for WCS finals. All it indicates is where the Live Finals take place.
Im not certain whether you agree with what I said or not--but I'm assuming that I was not clear.
If it's okay for Nabakov to leave the US and play for Russia where he suddenly remembers how to be a fucking goalie (As opposed to the first round of the NHL where he seems to never know how to block a damn shot)--then it should be okay for Hero to play in the America WCS.
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On June 04 2013 01:25 lichter wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 01:10 StarStruck wrote:On June 04 2013 00:03 lichter wrote:On June 03 2013 23:56 Caladan wrote:
Well, everyone has his own opinions but from an ESPORTS point of view, more viewer entertainment leads to more ESPORTS growth. Players like to cheer for their own teams and players, as you can see in soccer, basketball, tennis, etc, all the popular sports... hardly a billion people would tune in for a soccer world championship if 32 korean teams would play against each other, even if they were superior?
Also even if some "weaker" Americans/Europeans would travel to world finals: Upsets can always happen! Upsets are one of the greatest things to watch in SC2 and are great for entertainment.
I don't think any tournament in America/Europe can hold itself if only Koreans play and only Koreans win. Viewer numbers will drop, sponsors will drop, tournament will eventually die. We need to push the foreign esports scene, else we get the situation like in SC/BW again, only SC2 is not even as popular in Korea as SC/BW was. Well, [popular NA player] vs Innovation is sorta like San Marino vs Spain. Pretty sure people don't wanna watch that at the World Cup. If skill levels were as even as the top teams in most popular sports (even the group stages are fairly contested) of course people wanna see multiple countries duke it out. But until then it just isn't fun to watch players get crushed in a tournament that's meant to showcase the best in the world. I see a lot of people are still missing the point of this contest. If we were to region lock a qualifier like this for the Championship (notice how I didn't say NA, EU, KR, or World because it's a stupid way of branding a tournament when all they stand for are the final LAN location) the other regions would fall into the abyss. Something Blizzard kind of understands. In order for the gamers to improve they constantly have to be facing better opponents. This is why I don't like region locking. This is why I'm opposed to just having a handful of really good players in one qualifier. This is why I wrote a manifesto which establishes the perfect competitive battlefield in my book where we have an actual World Tour Circuit where you will always get to see the best players compete against one another. It doesn't take several games; it doesn't take 100 games; it takes 1000s of games. That's how they're going to improve. I have always argued this. Region locking will help local pros earn some money, but it won't help them improve. Yes it looks dire now, but hopefully their near-misses will be an impetus for development and change. Foreigners can win. Not now, not this year, but eventually. Region locking won't help.
I disagree. Exactly what difference would that be to the Wild West situation of 2010-2012? There was no evidence that the skill gap was closing in any aspect, much more that it was drifting apart. I understand that competition is the driver for improvement. But competition between vastly inequal players won't. But this isn't the actual bad part. It doesn't matter whether Korea has all the spots in the season finals or the Ro8 of the continental finals. Nobody is going to argue that the Korean players don't deserve it and nobody wants foreigners to grab spots and money just because they are foreigners.
But what is worrisome is when foreigners can't compete among each other anymore. In the Spanish football league, everybody knows that Barcelona and Madrid are the best. That doesn't make the other teams stop from competing: They play round robin over the whole year. They are racing for the best of the rest. And maybe, with hard work and some luck, try to topple the big two in one season. But in SC2? You hit a Korean, you probably go out. And that's so early in the tournament nobody will bother to make a difference to how you did compared to other foreigners. And so, the higher competitiveness in theory turns out to be a very anti-competitive structure in reality. It's about dodging Koreans in brackets, it's about dodging Koreans by going in tournaments where they are not. Those who have a big fanbase live from them by caring even less about the competition (streaming, casting), the rest will retire.
"You shouldn't dodge and/or concede to Koreans, you should beat them" - Yes, this is true. But players can only rise to the challenge gradually. And this isn't easy in an anti-competitive environment. It is true that it is not easy to design competition in such a way that it has local competition but that there are also incentives to go further. But the way it was designed in the past was too reliant on the Cinderella breakout story. That somebody comes out of nowhere and starts to beat everyone, including Koreans. This is a terrible way to produce talent.
On June 04 2013 02:44 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2013 02:29 SiroKO wrote:
Makes no sense to call this competition an American tournament if non-Americans can participate in it.
Would be funny if French swimmers could qualify to the Olympics from African countries, or other non-sense like this, in the name of "athletical prowess".
This is so stupid that ones might wonder if Blizzard is not trying to make a political point about "globalization". These tournaments aren't as much about nationality as they are about what region you're playing sc2 in.
These tournaments aren't as much about what region you're playing sc2 in as they are about if your team can afford flight tickets.
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EPT
