I love Nestea, but his career was short and only encompassed the very earliest portions of the game.
soO has been an established name and one of the best Zergs in the world for years now. His 6 Silvers considering the era he played in is far more impressive than Nestea's 3 GSLs, and unlike Mvp he never had the HoTS comeback to solidify his reign as a comeback king.
Soo, without that IEM victory, would still be the second best Zerg behind the Dark Lord. the consistency of his seconds in the toughest tourney is unheard of.
also, what the hell was SSL 2017? I'm trying to make sense of challenge and fast lane and the way they did the brackets. Soo won challenge, which is like winning code A?
I started watching SC with 2013 dreamhack Bucharest, and 2013 wcs season 2 finals, and already by then I didn't understand why tastosis talked up nestea so much in the best of YouTube clips. he was done premier competitively after iron squid 2 in 2012. soo was a much better player even without the gold.
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
The question is if we look at the very bottom of GSL, Armani, Keen or aLive the question I ask myself is are the above mentioned foreigners favored? unfavored? equal? I intended to disagree with you but after looking at 2018 GSL qualifier results when foreigners were trying to get into GSL a lot more than now does seem to indicate that many more than 10 are equal. Damnit, you don't even need to convince me, I'm convincing myslef (>_<)
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
The question is if we look at the very bottom of GSL, Armani, Keen or aLive the question I ask myself is are the above mentioned foreigners favored? unfavored? equal? I intended to disagree with you but after looking at 2018 GSL qualifier results when foreigners were trying to get into GSL a lot more than now does seem to indicate that many more than 10 are equal. Damnit, you don't even need to convince me, I'm convincing myslef (>_<)
I'd be VERY curious to see how the top foreign competitors not named Serral would perform vs the Ro32 level GSL Koreans. I mean we could also exclude, Neeb, Scarlett, Special and Reynor since they already proved their stuff by making it to the Ro16.
I'd love to see how the others matched up. It's too bad that thanks to regionlocking we'll never get a full gauge of just where the skill divide is.
All we get are two or three mixed global contests a year. That's a shame.
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
The question is if we look at the very bottom of GSL, Armani, Keen or aLive the question I ask myself is are the above mentioned foreigners favored? unfavored? equal? I intended to disagree with you but after looking at 2018 GSL qualifier results when foreigners were trying to get into GSL a lot more than now does seem to indicate that many more than 10 are equal. Damnit, you don't even need to convince me, I'm convincing myslef (>_<)
I'd be VERY curious to see how the top foreign competitors not named Serral would perform vs the Ro32 level GSL Koreans. I mean we could also exclude, Neeb, Scarlett, Special and Reynor since they already proved their stuff by making it to the Ro16.
I'd love to see how the others matched up. It's too bad that thanks to regionlocking we'll never get a full gauge of just where the skill divide is.
All we get are two or three mixed global contests a year. That's a shame.
I just posted where you can see that......
Of course "some results" might not be enough results for you or maybe you are just too lazy to look it up yourself?
GSL 2018 s2 qualifiers saw (excluding Scarlett and SpeCial) Kelazhur take Dear down but get knocked out by Keen and Forte. Puck defeated Creator but got knocked out by Bunny and TY. Sortof defeated TOP and got knocked out by Jjakji and Hurricane. Zanster defeated ByuL but got knocked out by Rogue and Patience Noregret was defeated by Gumiho and Trust. Lambo got knocked out by Ryung and Ragnarok. Has defeated Elazer and Ryung but got knocked out by Innovation and Ragnarok.
Day 2 Zanster gets defeated by Dear but qualifies through defeating Natural, Forte and Ragnarok. Sortof qualifies by defeating Emotion and Creator. Elazer get defeated by Hurricane but qualifies through defeating Overpass, Parting and Hurricane(revenge). Lambo gets knocked out by Bunny. Puck defeats Rookie but get knocked out by Rogue and Jjakji. Kelazhur defeat Noregret but gets knocked out by Impact and Ryung. Noregret defeats Dandy but gets knocked out by Ryung and Kelazhur.
Looking at the results its not like all the foreigners just gets stomped, out of the 7 notable foreigners 3 qualified. Included Noregret in notable foreigners since he actually qualified the season before =P
Also Sortof qualified into ro32 twice in a row which would mean he is a gsl ro 32 foreigner? =D
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
No they could not. Even if some of them somehow qualified, they would just get completely destroyed in RO32. Even the better foreigners (Elazer, Showtime, Heromarine, Uthermal, Lambo) got stomped by Koreans on the last HSC. And those werent even the absolute best ones. Why would the results in GSL be any different?
On July 06 2019 11:29 AzAlexZ wrote: [quote] Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
Because those insignificant low tier players, just as you call them, won tournaments during HoTS while the best foreigners couldn't(Sen and Lilbow succeeded in the end, but still). You haven't really been following my reasoning, have you? The ones in your list won tournaments in WoL or LoTV too(with the notable exception of Hyun, who however was one map away from a Code S title) and, I insist, cannot even be called mid tier.
Also, Bunny and Creator, who were the only non S class koreans at HSC, certainly didn't "stomp"; those are the players the foreigners can replace in ro32. Zest, Stats, TY can underperform but unless they are slumping super hard like Rogue did, they are easily capable of manhandling good foreigners(surprise surprise, Solar lost a ZvZ to Elazer instead, and it's not the first time it happens).
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
No they could not. Even if some of them somehow qualified, they would just get completely destroyed in RO32. Even the better foreigners (Elazer, Showtime, Heromarine, Uthermal, Lambo) got stomped by Koreans on the last HSC. And those werent even the absolute best ones. Why would the results in GSL be any different?
Creator went 2-5 and crashed out in the group stage, with losses to Reynor, Lambo, Snute (retired, lol) and Harstem. Bunny lost to Elazer and Hellraiser in the groups. Solar lost to Elazer in the knockout round (and Reynor in the groups).
These are players who sometimes qualify for Code S. We're not talking about the second tier of foreigners being favoured against players like Stats, Zest, soO or TY, who are some of the best in Korea: Stats is probably still the best Protoss, although Trap and Zest can make claims to that title too, soO is the second-best Zerg, and TY is top 3 terran. So calling them "not the best" is a bit of a weird statement. It's worth noting that the second-rate Koreans also got trashed by these.
There's a huge gap between the top 10-15 players in Korea and the rest. And that "rest" is really no better than the top 15 or so foreigners. This is twice in a row that Special makes Ro16 in GSL, and he isn't miles ahead of other foreigners.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
Because those insignificant low tier players, just as you call them, won tournaments during HoTS while the best foreigners couldn't(Sen and Lilbow succeeded in the end, but still). You haven't really been following my reasoning, have you? The ones in your list won tournaments in WoL or LoTV too(with the notable exception of Hyun, who however was one map away from a Code S title) and, I insist, cannot even be called mid tier.
Okay I think I get it now. But no-one is arguing the improvement of foreigners and decline of the depth and lower level koreans. This does not really help reinforce your argument that WCS has more quality now than in had before the region lock. Because it wasnt flukes like Duckdeock who consistently crushed the foreign scene but it was players like Polt, MMA, Hydra, MC, Inno. But these dont fit your criteria do they? Also, while the foreigners did improve, so did the top koreans. Exclude Serral and the results are not really any better than they were before. Korea still crushes it, and occasional moments of brilliance (like Neeb and Scarlett winning tournaments) that happened before as well (Stephano, Naniwa, Marinelord at NW, Snute).
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
Could Mana, Harstem, Marinelord, Ptitdrogo, DnS or Bly at least qualify for GSL. Of course they could, I'm not saying they couldn't, I also believe they could certainly.
No they could not. Even if some of them somehow qualified, they would just get completely destroyed in RO32. Even the better foreigners (Elazer, Showtime, Heromarine, Uthermal, Lambo) got stomped by Koreans on the last HSC. And those werent even the absolute best ones. Why would the results in GSL be any different?
Creator went 2-5 and crashed out in the group stage, with losses to Reynor, Lambo, Snute (retired, lol) and Harstem. Bunny lost to Elazer and Hellraiser in the groups. Solar lost to Elazer in the knockout round (and Reynor in the groups).
These are players who sometimes qualify for Code S. We're not talking about the second tier of foreigners being favoured against players like Stats, Zest, soO or TY, who are some of the best in Korea: Stats is probably still the best Protoss, although Trap and Zest can make claims to that title too, soO is the second-best Zerg, and TY is top 3 terran. So calling them "not the best" is a bit of a weird statement. It's worth noting that the second-rate Koreans also got trashed by these.
There's a huge gap between the top 10-15 players in Korea and the rest. And that "rest" is really no better than the top 15 or so foreigners. This is twice in a row that Special makes Ro16 in GSL, and he isn't miles ahead of other foreigners.
Yes, I agree. There is a huge gap between top 16 or top 20 in Korea and the rest. And there is a huge gap between Serral and the rest of WCS, and also between Neeb, Special, Scarlett and the rest (Reynor is getting there maybe but he is still young and inconsistent). But the point is exactly that the mid/lower tier foreigners still have no chance for Korea top 20 and the top foreigners except Serral still have no chance against Korea top 10. So except korea losing depth and foreigners having better ZvZ because of a number of factors, is there really a big change in the terms of results and the gap between korea and foreign-land?
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
Because those insignificant low tier players, just as you call them, won tournaments during HoTS while the best foreigners couldn't(Sen and Lilbow succeeded in the end, but still). You haven't really been following my reasoning, have you? The ones in your list won tournaments in WoL or LoTV too(with the notable exception of Hyun, who however was one map away from a Code S title) and, I insist, cannot even be called mid tier.
Okay I think I get it now. But no-one is arguing the improvement of foreigners and decline of the depth and lower level koreans. This does not really help reinforce your argument that WCS has more quality now than in had before the region lock. Because it wasnt flukes like Duckdeock who consistently crushed the foreign scene but it was players like Polt, MMA, Hydra, MC, Inno. But these dont fit your criteria do they? Also, while the foreigners did improve, so did the top koreans. Exclude Serral and the results are not really any better than they were before. Korea still crushes it, and occasional moments of brilliance (like Neeb and Scarlett winning tournaments) that happened before as well (Stephano, Naniwa, Marinelord at NW, Snute).
If in past times you had to list the top 50 players, you'd probably include 2, maybe 3 foreigners. Right now, there's a case to be made for 15 or more. Moreover, however much you want to exclude Serral as an abnormality, he *is* a top 3 player right now, and he is a product of the foreign scene. That is *also* unheard of. So between those two "stats", I think is is incontrovertible that the foreign scene is catching up.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
Because those insignificant low tier players, just as you call them, won tournaments during HoTS while the best foreigners couldn't(Sen and Lilbow succeeded in the end, but still). You haven't really been following my reasoning, have you? The ones in your list won tournaments in WoL or LoTV too(with the notable exception of Hyun, who however was one map away from a Code S title) and, I insist, cannot even be called mid tier.
Okay I think I get it now. But no-one is arguing the improvement of foreigners and decline of the depth and lower level koreans. This does not really help reinforce your argument that WCS has more quality now than in had before the region lock. Because it wasnt flukes like Duckdeock who consistently crushed the foreign scene but it was players like Polt, MMA, Hydra, MC, Inno. But these dont fit your criteria do they? Also, while the foreigners did improve, so did the top koreans. Exclude Serral and the results are not really any better than they were before. Korea still crushes it, and occasional moments of brilliance (like Neeb and Scarlett winning tournaments) that happened before as well (Stephano, Naniwa, Marinelord at NW, Snute).
On the contrary, Nakajin didn't believe foreigners significantly improved since HoTS(that's why this discussion started).
WCS AM in 2013 probably had more top contenders than WCS has now, but none of them was a foreigner(Huk wasn't as strong, Scarlett was inconsistent as usual); also, the unified Circuit in 2016 was maybe the closest it ever was to Code S in terms of average level considering that year was probably the best for WCS and one of the worst for korean Starcraft, but a player of the caliber of Serral was not there. I wouldn't be so sure WCS nowadays is worse than it used to be.
If we exclude Serral, foreigners in LoTV didn't have greater results than in WoL, but, compared to the top koreans, they are so much better than it was the case in HOTS.
On one of the “best games” intros I have read was about an unbelievable hold by performed by Nestea vs Choya on scrap station, but could not find VOD anywhere Is there any chance this VOD still exists?
Funny thing this game description was about soO channeling his inner NesTea + Show Spoiler +
I feel that alongside winning things there should be some weighting for folks who figured out how SC2 should be played when the game was totally fresh too.
This isn’t too say people who came later didn’t bring their own innovations but Nestea was so ahead of the curve in carving out the cornerstone of Zerg play when nobody had anything else to go off.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
"I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa..." = Why even mention these insignificant low tier players instead of mentioning the ones in my list? Because it fits more into your dreamy views? Why am I even trying, you are a lost cause... :/
Because those insignificant low tier players, just as you call them, won tournaments during HoTS while the best foreigners couldn't(Sen and Lilbow succeeded in the end, but still). You haven't really been following my reasoning, have you? The ones in your list won tournaments in WoL or LoTV too(with the notable exception of Hyun, who however was one map away from a Code S title) and, I insist, cannot even be called mid tier.
Okay I think I get it now. But no-one is arguing the improvement of foreigners and decline of the depth and lower level koreans. This does not really help reinforce your argument that WCS has more quality now than in had before the region lock. Because it wasnt flukes like Duckdeock who consistently crushed the foreign scene but it was players like Polt, MMA, Hydra, MC, Inno. But these dont fit your criteria do they? Also, while the foreigners did improve, so did the top koreans. Exclude Serral and the results are not really any better than they were before. Korea still crushes it, and occasional moments of brilliance (like Neeb and Scarlett winning tournaments) that happened before as well (Stephano, Naniwa, Marinelord at NW, Snute).
On the contrary, Nakajin didn't believe foreigners significantly improved since HoTS(that's why this discussion started).
WCS AM in 2013 probably had more top contenders than WCS has now, but none of them was a foreigner(Huk wasn't as strong, Scarlett was inconsistent as usual); also, the unified Circuit in 2016 was maybe the closest it ever was to Code S in terms of average level considering that year was probably the best for WCS and one of the worst for korean Starcraft, but a player of the caliber of Serral was not there. I wouldn't be so sure WCS nowadays is worse than it used to be.
If we exclude Serral, foreigners in LoTV didn't have greater results than in WoL ones, but, compared to the top koreans, they are so much better than it was the case in HOTS.
Right. Thanks for clarifying. Yes, its undeniable that foreigners did improve from the HOTS era
It can't really be shocking that once the big sponsors and teams left SC2 in Korea that foreigners would close the gap. That was the main advantage Koreans had and reduced the depth of the scene greatly.
To me it really leveled the playing field in terms of infrastructure which has led to the results we see. I don't think that if team houses were still in full swing the foreigners would be having the relative level of success that they are enjoying now. (Besides the top top foreigners who would be performing regardless)