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I listened to the cast and spent a day thinking about it before commenting. All i can say is i really dont like Lee at all. I mean seriously, at all. I am not trying to be a jerk about it, in fact, im toning down my frustration towards his stance on everything. Let me break it down for you Lee:
MLG makes money off competitive gaming. But, i personally dont give two shits about halo or any of the other mickey mouse games they consider to be competitive. They didnt consider Brood War competitive i suppose, or maybe it just didnt have enough hype behind it because it wasnt brand new. Financial and sponsor logistics aside, your track record in my mind as a Starcraft fan is: MLG didnt care about SC until it had pretty graphics, even though competitive SC is the utmost pinnacle of competitive gaming. For this, MLG will always seem a fair weather friend to SC fans who have been around longer than the last year. Thats one point against you Lee.
The next thing that bothers me is after repeatedly being proven wrong, as well as mass unrest from SC community over extended series, they stand firm as if they are deaf. It doesnt matter if half a case can be scraped together to defend extended series. The fact remains that it is not how SC has ever been run, its unproven, it provides almost zero improvement to the viewer experience, and now even hurts your PR with the SC community even more by how blatantly non-caring MLGs stance is toward community feedback. How is it Lee, that MLG wants to turn a buck off SC2, and people are saying hey we dont want this system, and you are saying "no, we wont listen". Since when does that work in business Lee? There is NOTHING in extended series that helps improve the viewer experience. In fact, it robs us of matches and forces us to clamor through the internet looking for previous matches to form a complete picture of how two players series of games played out. To me, that ends the argument right there. No one, NO ONE wants to sit down to TLO vs Idra and see less games because of some ridiculous rule brought in from other inferior games (halo etc). The fact that MLG doesnt understand the mindset of how a best of X works in RTS in regard to player mindset and momentum, as well as the viewer experience in regard to that system is a massive flaming strike 2 against MLG. I appreciate MLG helping to spread SC2 (now that MLG stands to profit from it of course), but to come to the party late and then start playing god with a system thats worked well for a decade is upsetting.
To be honest Lee, ive been watching SC for forever, and when i found about about extended series rule it took the legitimacy out of MLG as a tournament for me. And even if im an idiot and a moron for not understanding how in some crazy ass backwards way it helps the player 1 time in 10 scenarios, this is what your target audience experiences as a result of your decision making. SC is not Halo. The absolute worst thing you could do is come into SC community and pretend it is, and if MLG knew anything about SC and SC fans they should have known that from day 1.
EDIT: And as far as MLG not wanting to use booths... heres what you do, you build a base with wheels. The booths used in GSL etc in Korea are on wheels. Im sure your trucks at MLG have ramps and 2-3 people could move a single booth easily. Then you build a frame with 3 layers: the internal, the middle, and the external. The two external layers are wood, the internal layer is rigid fiberglass. In between those layers you put sheets of rockwool. Mass is the key to cutting out sound. Any average grade carpenter could do this in a couple days tops, for less than 800 bucks easily. Maybe less. Heres the magic part Lee, you can put sponsor logos on the inside of the booth walls. So far all ive heard is how cold it can be for players at MLG. Cold hands makes for shitty play. A booth helps solves like 5 problems at once as well as provides opportunities for sponsor product placement. All it takes is a little effort to make this happen.
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On December 02 2010 11:10 IdrA wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 11:00 hmunkey wrote:
Tyler and Lee were right. I know extended series isn't popular, but it is the most fair. Adding it makes it harder for those coming out of the loser bracket, but they already lost. Removing it makes it harder for those in the winners bracket, but they won. It only follows logic that the extended series rule is good for the tournament. that makes no sense, because any time the extended series rule is in effect both players will be in the losers bracket, except for the grand final where its already standard practice for the winner to have an advantage. if theyre playing for the second time they've both lost matches. one does not deserve an advantage over the other.
The philosophy is that the person with the advantage had a longer winning streak in the winner's bracket, so he deserves an advantage over the person who might have been knocked out the first round and coasting through people who lost. The longer streak is important because the advantaged person has been only playing winners in the W bracket so far, while the person in the loser bracket has been playing weaker people (those that were knocked down to the bracket earlier).
It makes sense on some level, but I'm not sure if it's needed at all. Being in the losers bracket is a disadvantage enough.
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On December 02 2010 17:38 Sadistx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 11:10 IdrA wrote:On December 02 2010 11:00 hmunkey wrote:
Tyler and Lee were right. I know extended series isn't popular, but it is the most fair. Adding it makes it harder for those coming out of the loser bracket, but they already lost. Removing it makes it harder for those in the winners bracket, but they won. It only follows logic that the extended series rule is good for the tournament. that makes no sense, because any time the extended series rule is in effect both players will be in the losers bracket, except for the grand final where its already standard practice for the winner to have an advantage. if theyre playing for the second time they've both lost matches. one does not deserve an advantage over the other. The philosophy is that the person with the advantage had a longer winning streak in the winner's bracket, so he deserves an advantage over the person who might have been knocked out the first round and coasting through people who lost. The longer streak is important because the advantaged person has been only playing winners in the W bracket so far, while the person in the loser bracket has been playing weaker people (those that were knocked down to the bracket earlier). It makes sense on some level, but I'm not sure if it's needed at all. Being in the losers bracket is a disadvantage enough.
the other player could have lost the very next round in the winners bracket. the structure of the brackets means that you play vs a lot more people going through the loser bracket. calling them weaker players when everything's being decided by bo3 matches is questionable as well.
theres too many variables in everything to try to judge the value of wins.
the fact of the matter is that any time an extended series would apply, barring the grand finals, both players are x-1. one player could have more wins, one player could have higher quality wins, but that isn't anything that can be judged consistently. it has to be ignored. the only fair way to handle the situation is to have both players on a level playing field.
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On December 02 2010 00:32 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 00:13 Siffer wrote:
RE: Extended Series.
Lower bracket should be considered a separate tournament from Upper bracket. You get knocked out of one tournament and get placed in another.
At least that is how I have viewed it for the past 10 years I have played CS, WC3, and SC2. Ugh I can't believe I keep getting drawn back into commenting about extended series... but like, your view blows my mind. They're 2 different tournaments? At the same event, with the same players, competing for the same prize money and ranking, with structures logically linked together, etc... I can't fathom how you can see a double elim competition as having 2 separate tournaments going on. The view that tournaments have a memory of a player's performance is actually shared by both sides of this debate. Both views recognize that a tournament remembers that a player has won or lost rounds because that is essential to a bracket. The extended series view wants to remember another thing: which players a player wins or loses against. There is no debate that if you care about who you've had to face, then playing one bo7 is better than playing 2 bo3's. (Winning the first bo3 and losing the second bo3 should obviously be regarded as an even performance between those players, but one player gets eliminated and the other goes on. No reason has been discovered for weighting the second bo3 more. Attempts at it have been mere restatements of the fundamental position of those opposed to extended series.) What confuses me is that everyone judges a player's path through the bracket based on who he has had to play, judging more difficult paths as greater accomplishments, and yet they do not want a tournament structure that utilizes that wisdom in order to improve its ability to advance the better player. If we as subjective judges of tournament performance find memory of the identities of a player's opponents valuable, and we have one small way of implementing this information into an objective format, then why not use it?
The problem is, you are looking at each map played as a point, when it isn't. The series is a point. When you lose a match, you are dumped into an entirely different bracket.
Each match should have a binary result. You either win the series or you don't. At the beginning of the tournament everyone starts with a '0'. As people lose, their switches get flipped to '1'. Lets say Player A and Player B play in the first round. Player A defeats Player B in the match 2-0. Player B gets his switch flipped to 1. Player A makes it all the way to winners semi-final and loses, resulting in his switch getting flipped to 1. Player B makes it all the way through the losers bracket to face Player A for a second time. The value of their current performance is the same.
I understand your argument of "Well, player A performed better earlier on in the tournament vs Player B." The problem that I have, is that if they both meet each other again, they are actually very similar in skill. This is due to the losers bracket being inverted so that the same two people aren't forced to play vs each other within a couple of rounds(Imagine having to play IdrA in winners round 1 and then again in losers round 3 while two jobbers duke it out on the other side of the losers bracket). Ontop of this, Player B has had the unfortunate consequence for having to play ~double the amount of games as Player A. That is player Bs punishment. In such a fast paced tournament structure like MLG, I am sure you will agree that having to play all those extra matches in losers bracket can be quite grueling and a huge disadvantage in itself.
Furthermore, you have to factor the variance in starcraft 2(or any other RTS for that matter). This includes map rotation and spawn location. It is quite easy to lose 0-2 to a player of equal skill with favorable maps and spawns, let alone difficult maps and spawns. I am not going to compare it to Halo, because I have never played a game of halo in my life; however, lets compare it to CS.
In CS, I actually think that an extended series format would be somewhat acceptable. Why? Because each team plays as terrorist and counter-terrorist the same amount of rounds. If a map is heavily Terrorist favored, it is washed out after half time since the other team has an equal number of rounds to play on Terrorist.
Unfortunately, RTS games don't work like that.
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fuck, this episode was so good. loved the swedish announcer part :D
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On December 02 2010 16:40 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 16:32 kojinshugi wrote:
There's absolutely nothing more anticlimactic than a final match with 2 games. This. Grand final with the extended series rule is anything except "grand". None of the MLG grand finals were worth watching from spectators' perspective, probably from casual players' perspective either as you're rarely going to get good games in a situation like that.
Completely agree.
MLG should worry less about trying to make a tournament 100% fair, and worry more about making a tournament 100% awesome.
No major league sport -- NBA, MLB, NFL -- is perfectly fair. They try their best, but they're not going to enforce a rule or format that hurts the entertainment value of a sport more than it helps it.
I think the double-elimination format is "fair enough", and keeps a good player from being cheesed out. The extended series is just overkill.
Even from a player's perspective ... imagine going to the semi-finals/finals from the losers bracket knowing you have to 3-0 or 4-0 a guy? It must totally change your game play.
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On December 02 2010 17:49 IdrA wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 17:38 Sadistx wrote:On December 02 2010 11:10 IdrA wrote:On December 02 2010 11:00 hmunkey wrote:
Tyler and Lee were right. I know extended series isn't popular, but it is the most fair. Adding it makes it harder for those coming out of the loser bracket, but they already lost. Removing it makes it harder for those in the winners bracket, but they won. It only follows logic that the extended series rule is good for the tournament. that makes no sense, because any time the extended series rule is in effect both players will be in the losers bracket, except for the grand final where its already standard practice for the winner to have an advantage. if theyre playing for the second time they've both lost matches. one does not deserve an advantage over the other. The philosophy is that the person with the advantage had a longer winning streak in the winner's bracket, so he deserves an advantage over the person who might have been knocked out the first round and coasting through people who lost. The longer streak is important because the advantaged person has been only playing winners in the W bracket so far, while the person in the loser bracket has been playing weaker people (those that were knocked down to the bracket earlier). It makes sense on some level, but I'm not sure if it's needed at all. Being in the losers bracket is a disadvantage enough. the other player could have lost the very next round in the winners bracket. the structure of the brackets means that you play vs a lot more people going through the loser bracket. calling them weaker players when everything's being decided by bo3 matches is questionable as well. theres too many variables in everything to try to judge the value of wins. the fact of the matter is that any time an extended series would apply, barring the grand finals, both players are x-1. one player could have more wins, one player could have higher quality wins, but that isn't anything that can be judged consistently. it has to be ignored. the only fair way to handle the situation is to have both players on a level playing field.
Yeah, that's the issue I have with it as well. If they get knocked down the next round and automatically get an advantage, that'd be kind of retarded. Even if their streak was longer, the question of whether they actually deserve an advantage is up for debate. They _should_ be able to beat that person again even without an advantage.
They aren't weaker players, but in the frame of that particular tournament they could be viewed as such. Again, it's a value judgment that MLG probably shouldn't be making to issue advantages to either player.
My pov is actually in agreement with Inc's, as in they should just abolish it, because no one else does it and for simplicity's sake.
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I would like more talk about Starcraft than about Tournament-Brackets/rules and so on...
I was bored for most of the cast :/.
Discuss Maps/Matchups/Strats... Not all the other stuff. Right now the priorities seem to be reversed.
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one point against extended series i haven't seen anyone point out is that the winner of the previous meeting is innately rewarded by getting to play someone they know they can beat. pretty sure in most cases, i'd rather play someone i know i can beat than someone else who i'm unfamiliar with. i don't think it's fair that this guy i already proved i could beat also has to wear oven mitts while playing
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TBH I'm a massive fan of the podcast, but I had to refrain myself from falling alseep so many times during that episode. The first 90 minutes on MLG was so boring to listen imo.
My constructive criticisms:
- Less talk about tournaments rules
- Less talk about tournament setups and how they are run
- Less talk about random off-topic stuff
- More talk about STARCRAFT 2!!!
- Talk about major news of the week, major controversies, foreign scene, korean scene, strategies, maps etc....
I couldn't care less about extended series anymore considering half the show is dedicated to it for the last 3 weeks or so. (Just drop that topic, there are way more important issues in the SC2 scene). A topic I'll like to be discussed are the ridiculous one second rush distance maps and starting positions (ie Steppes and close position 4P maps). Are these design flaws that lead to really bad all-in games or should players accept that is part of the game now.
It's been the best podcast I've ever listened to, apart from this week's episode. Hopefully you guys can start prioritizing the topics more in the future.
Keep up the good work! (Btw Incontrol cracks me up =D)
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On December 02 2010 18:06 Velr wrote:
I would like more talk about Starcraft than about Tournament-Brackets/rules and so on...
I was bored for most of the cast :/.
Discuss Maps/Matchups/Strats... Not all the other stuff. Right now the priorities seem to be reversed.
Because tournaments and their rules is such a small part of SC2...
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United States7166 Posts
This whole extended series argument makes no sense to me. Why should the player who fought his way through the arduous loser's bracket, get a significant disadvantage only if he happens to be matched with 1 specific opponent. If that player happens to face someone else, he has a much better chance to advance to the next round as they're on an even playing field compared to an uphill battle. Each round of the tournament is separated for a reason, that's how the tournament works. It makes no sense to try and somehow continue a previous round's results just because it's the same 2 players.
Someone said "well I don't see why if I beat you in a bo3 earlier in the tourney, and then we face again later and this time you beat me..you get to advance and I'm out?"
...because you lost another round on top of it while I only lost that one?
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On December 02 2010 18:06 Velr wrote:
I would like more talk about Starcraft than about Tournament-Brackets/rules and so on...
I was bored for most of the cast :/.
Discuss Maps/Matchups/Strats... Not all the other stuff. Right now the priorities seem to be reversed.
State of the Game is a talk show about competitive Starcraft, it's not the Newbie Tuesday Radio Edition.
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It's their show, they can talk about whatever they want.
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JP, the typical gamer diet lol lettuce shit. Love it  and yes Arizona Green Tea is my favorite, loaded with insane amount of sugar.
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incontrol is doing a coaching podcast if you want to listen to strategies
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I was really disappointed that you didn't ask Lee the most convincing - in my opinion - arguments.
- No one cares if it's fair when the grand final is over in less then 20 minutes.
- The earlier a player goes to the losers bracket, the more games they have to play. This is physically and mentally exhausting and is an advantage enough, so double elimination is fair nevertheless.
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Finland134 Posts
On December 01 2010 13:42 pararin wrote:
Here's paste of the poem, I'll translate it to English in some point:
Oodi Naamalle
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Vaka vahva Naamanen,
Starcraft pelaaja iänikuinen
Dreamhackeille lähti
Tuli hänestä oiva tähti
Kaiken tieltään kynti,
Svedut, korealaiset ja imbazerkit
Yllätyksenä jenkeille,
Suomipoika jätti muut penkeille
Nyt Naama kotona päiviään viettää,
Euroopassa ihan kaikki pieksää,
Kohta varmaan koreassa nylkee,
Tossiveli ylpeydessä kylpee
Ihan vitun jepa, seuraavaks GEEÄSÄLLÄSSÄ:ssä mies
Idran, Nestean, Foxerin, Boxerin eestä hynät vie.
- (C) Pararin 2010
I'll try my hand at translating the poem just for the hell of it.
The poem is heavily influence by a classic Finnish poem from our national epic, Kalevala.
Note also that the word "Naama" means "Face" in Finnish, but I'll leave it as is as it's a nick.
"Naamanen" is a play on "Väinämöinen" - a central character of Kalevala. He's basically the mary-sue druid/wizard/whatever who can make people sink into swamps by singing and do all kinds of crazy stuff. He gets his powers from actual knowledge (knowing arbitary things makes you a wizard) and from being old. Yes, it makes no sense but in old Finnish culture being old means being powerful. (Compare with "Ancient evil, ancient artifacts etc.)
The "Tossiveli" - part is likely a reference to Pararin himself. Does anyone know if he plays protoss?
Ode to Naama
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Stout Old Naamanen,
Player of Starcraft everlasting
To Dreamhack departed
Became a star most splendid
Plowed all on his path,
Swedes, Koreans and Imbazergs
As a surprise to the Yankees,
The boy of Finland left others on the sidelines
Now Naama spends his days at home,
Everyone in Europe lie beaten
Soon, likely in Korea he will flay,
Brother toss in pride will bask,
So f***ing good, next in GeeEsEl the Man
The dough from in front of IdrA, NesTea, Foxer and Boxer will have.
-Oodi Naamalle (C) Pararin 2010
-Translation butchered by FrozenSolid
I actually couldn't understand anything iNControl said when he read the poem, but I have to say that he has massive balls for trying. Also, the YLL- sound is similar to how you'd pronounce "Ewwwww" but add a long L-sound to the end. It's not a perfect match by any means, but I don't think there's a matching sound in the english language.
The reading was highly amusing.
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I think there needs to be more drama. I think what ruined a lot of the rivalries going on in my head that pro gamers saying that they don't hate each other.
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On December 02 2010 18:23 kojinshugi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2010 18:06 Velr wrote:
I would like more talk about Starcraft than about Tournament-Brackets/rules and so on...
I was bored for most of the cast :/.
Discuss Maps/Matchups/Strats... Not all the other stuff. Right now the priorities seem to be reversed.
State of the Game is a talk show about competitive Starcraft, it's not the Newbie Tuesday Radio Edition.
Who said anything about newb-level?
I just don't get why they discuss for like an hour about brackets since like... The last 2-3 Casts? It's like lsitening to a Jew arguing with a Christian about which religion is superior and why. This has not much to do with competetive Starcraft anymore, it's just a "war of faiths".
The other stuff about Boots and so on was fine because, surprise, it actually had something to do directly with Starcraft.
To say something about the coinflip was also good.
But i missed more about Dreamhack/GSL or recent trends whatever. You know, stuff about the Game.
That last cast felt to be nearly as much about Halo as about Starcraft  .
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EPT
