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On November 25 2011 03:58 MavivaM wrote:Show nested quote +FT.aCt)Sony United States. November 25 2011 02:58. Posts 348 PM Profile Quote #
Stareagle at one point in Brood War was one of Italy's best players and repetitive WCG Italy representative.
It might help if you do some brood war history before asking about known and unknown people. I know who StarEagle is. It's the reason why he is in the OP. But according to his results, Sc2 speaking he counts as emergent and I don't recall about him being invited somewhere. According to your account info you know BW better than me (no irony) so I'd like to ask you a question: why do you feel that BW has withstood so much the test of the time? Apart from the game mechanics and the game balance (or supposed, according to someone), why do you think that BW keeps lasting? Not for korean viewers, what keeps attracting foreigner fans? My personal bet is the quality of the games and therefore of the players. Because you can be sure that everyone is a beast, everyone puts his very best into the game and everyone DESERVES anything they get. Then, funny things to make the fans go crazy still happen despite the absolute professionality. Crazy celebrations, even if they managed to tone them down. Rivalries, scandals, hilarious stuff. Nothing different from Sc2. Imo at the end of the day what attracts people is the real worth of a player, and not other tangentially related things. Don't see why it should be the same in Sc2. Hey slow down, I never said that a guy who managed to compete against koreans in GSL was bad. Even TLO could compete with koreans months ago. And Tyler hasn't always been Tyler, but Nony. But at the current moment... it doesn't look like they are tearing brackets apart. It's quite obvious that they have been in a hard slump, luckily it seems that they are getting through and as soon as they manage to prove me wrong with a major win I'll be glad to eat my words in this own thread and then sign into their fan clubs. Until then, except for Jinro they play in tournaments thanks to invitations and without doing anything significant instead of players who maybe could do better. As said in the OP those are just examples taken from an ELITE of players (the professionals) who do that for living. I also mentioned Incontrol and Machine but this doesn't mean that I diss EG. Show nested quote + Chill Canada. November 25 2011 02:45. Posts 23009 PM Profile Blog Quote #
It's a shame, but the most popular aren't necessarily the best. If a tournament had the lineup you mentioned from an open bracket, I would frankly not watch it. I really want to see the most popular players, not the best :X BUT WHY DO YOU WANT TO HURT ESPORTS Jokes aside does it seem I am arrogant or whatever? It's not the point of my thread, don't get why some gets offended. If you want me to stop PM me and I'll tone it down.
To me personally, Brood War has excelled and stood for so long not only because of the game quality. Sure the game came out in the 90's and still to this day is played. The game itself underwent so many different phases of growth. Every new year that came, new aspects came as well.
Brood War and Starcraft 2 are nowhere alike in gameplay aspects. Sure there are units that are the same. Sure the concept is the same. But lets face it. Starcraft 2 is so dumbed down. Its basically Warcraft 3 with macro. That is basically the main reason.
And again, majority of Starcraft 2 players didn't play Brood War but most of all don't even research anything about Brood War and the players that played. I've seen countless games of random nobodies talk trash in a game and act like a failboat elitist all because SC2 is so dumbed down.
But it is whatever.
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On November 25 2011 08:52 Coramoor wrote:
there is a hilariously pathetic reaction by a lot of "fans" of this game in this thread
Random Fan: We want to watch Destiny, Incontrol and Tyler cause we know who they are, so we won't tune in otherwise
The problem with this thinking is that none of these players are any good by comparison, someone mentioned ostojiy getting an invite to blizzcon and doing nothing, sure that's true, but he obliterated Destiny at MLG, he's a top GM, has shown commitment and can't get signed to a top team, yet Destiny gets signed cause he's obnoxious on his stream and gamers seem to like that, so he gets 5000 viewers a night
Personality is important, no doubt about it but when it comes down to it, if you want this game to grow and be popular(on a scale outside what we currently have) you need to teach the good players to be personalities, and not have the personalities become the main players, cause otherwise we'll npever be able to match Korea
Edit: spelling fail
Pathetic? That seems a little inflammatory. People will be fans of players for whatever reason they want, and you can bet very often it has nothing to do with skill.
Why hate on people who want to be entertained by a personality? Contrary at least to your beliefs, personalities aren't skills we pick up along the way. Maybe these players should get themselves out there more and build a fan base as clearly this was no big obstacle for Destiny waaay before he was a part of a "top team."
Also, addressing the hate on Tyler, Inc, and Destiny, do you honestly consider them awful compared to players like Ostojiy? Do some research and try not to sound so ignorant and you might see that player comparison and canvass comparison is more than a single MLG result and your own opinion on how someone acts.
Btw: Ostojiy never has even played Destiny? Did you
make that up?
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On November 25 2011 09:50 BFCrimson wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2011 08:52 Coramoor wrote:
there is a hilariously pathetic reaction by a lot of "fans" of this game in this thread
Random Fan: We want to watch Destiny, Incontrol and Tyler cause we know who they are, so we won't tune in otherwise
The problem with this thinking is that none of these players are any good by comparison, someone mentioned ostojiy getting an invite to blizzcon and doing nothing, sure that's true, but he obliterated Destiny at MLG, he's a top GM, has shown commitment and can't get signed to a top team, yet Destiny gets signed cause he's obnoxious on his stream and gamers seem to like that, so he gets 5000 viewers a night
Personality is important, no doubt about it but when it comes down to it, if you want this game to grow and be popular(on a scale outside what we currently have) you need to teach the good players to be personalities, and not have the personalities become the main players, cause otherwise we'll npever be able to match Korea
Edit: spelling fail Btw: Ostojiy never has even played Destiny? Did you make that up?
He beat him this MLG, look it up on Liquipedia.
I think, more tournaments should put more focus on qualifiers instead of invites, if players are so good that they would earn an invite, they should qualify anyway. If they don't, well, more attention to up-and-coming players. You just need to market qualifiers better, make people understand that the qualifiers deserve to be there and show them how their favorites got beaten by those exact guys. How are rather unknown talents supposed to gain fans if you don't give them much of a platform? You shouldn't send out pity invites, but opening more spots in tournaments for qualifiers would be a step in the right direction.
Right now, the tournament structures and the top-heavy prizepools don't allow nearly enough players to sustain themselves and the prevalent invitational format gets too much money to too few players.
I think we'll get there eventually.
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One thing that strikes me about this, going back to Sundances interview where he talked about some players being more marketable than others. So the truth is, its not about who is necessarily the best, but who is the most popular. Popular players will be bring in more viewers.
A second observation would that we don't necessarily NEED the best players to be in every tournament. In fact, I would argue that in the US, most professional sports don't have the best players. They are just the ones that followed the correct path to get there. I am sure those of us who played sports in high school can remember an outstanding athlete who either didn't even finish high school or didn't get the grades to go to college. The biggest different between ESports and real sports is that right now anyone can prove their worth on the 'field'. So just like the best basketball player in the world might be playing pickup ball somewhere with his buddies, we have the same thing starting to occure in ESports. Players like the ones mentioned above are the ones who followed the right path, where as some of the upcoming players simply aren't. The question is, how will the ESports community handle it. Do we really need only the most talented players, or the ones who are going to be the most marketable?
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But surely invites are conducive to a meritocracy... they've shown their skill, so they don't need to slog through prior stages ;o
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On November 25 2011 06:30 RoboBob wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2011 06:05 ScyHigh wrote:On November 25 2011 04:31 Shrewmy wrote:
People should only be able to enter tournaments through their own efforts, just have open qualifiers either online or over a long period of time at local areas leading up to a grand final. Popular pros could still get their own time in the spotlight through team leagues, they shouldn't get a free spot just because of EG's massive marketing budget. You could still have invitationals, but that sort of system should be kept out of things like MLG.
Your use of meritocracy is correct in that players like InControl, as much as I love him, really shouldn't be given a free spot at MLG just because he did so well early on in SC2's release. You realise that MLG has no invitational element other than the Korean invites right? Actually, you're wrong twice. First of all, all pool players are essentially invites to the next MLG. Secondly, MLG has run an invite-only online tournament. The finals of that were actually played at the last MLG. Naniwa vs Nestea, you may have heard of that match? =P
Actually no. Pool players are more akin to being Seeded which does reward consistency(We can argue all about the points format but overall the idea is totally fine)
Overall I think the ratio of opens to invite tournaments should be more in favour of opens. Invitationals are fine but for a healthy competitive scene we need more chances for unknowns to make a name for themeselves.
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I just want to mention one of what i thought was the worst example of this; that 8 person female tournament with the 10k prize, i forget the acronym. How could the invites possibly be decided? If there's never been this scale of event before who's to say new participants wouldn't show up and enter. Wouldn't that be the point of an event like this in the first place... otherwise, what is it?
Really at the end of it a 10k tournament came and went (same prize pool as TSL2 which is funny to think, how big of a deal we took it) without much exposure interest or anything.
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On November 25 2011 00:50 CDR wrote:
Esports is about money, not promoting new players. TLO, Jinro or InControl are getting invites because they bring attention of their huge fan bases. That's also the main reason they even are still parts of their teams. Do you think TL pays TLO or Jinro because they hope for their results? Nope, it's just an insane amount of people who visit this site and support TL because of them. How many fans would abandon TL if they kicked out TLO and Jinro? A lot. And it's not only TL but all foreign pro teams. It's pure bussiness.
This is the reason the Teams should be featured and the players shouldn't really matter as much. Players come and go but Team Liquid will outlast them all. IMO the teams should be the valuable assets within esports, not the players.
With this the competition could be shifted from massive 1v1 96 hour marathon tournaments that are the MLG events, into a more consistent and regular format of team league competitions much like Eg Masters Cup. It would take a lot of strain off the organizers, players, casters and everyone involved. This is basically the same design as the the Pro League and it works to get people watching. IPL and NASL are getting close with consistent streaming, but I still don't know who most of the guys in the qualifying tournaments are unless I recognize their team tag. Production costs could be drastically reduced and everyone involved could play/manage/cast/etc with normal consistency. MLG and IPL etc are much fun, I understand, but perhaps these tournaments could be the culmination of a more normal team league.
Also this format is how all sports are, the teams brand themselves and create loyal fan bases that end up paying for the content/merch etc for years and years. How would the NFL work out if they couldn't replace a quarterback or if their star running back got injured? It should not be about the individual players, it should be about the teams.
One other effect of having a more team orientated format would be the talent pool could be more varied without having a major effect on results. Eg. iNcontrol not having results really hurts his ego and makes EG look bad overall, but if it were a team league iNcontrol could focus on becoming a specialist, say PvT, where they could play him circumstantially and he could narrow down his focus for practice. The moderating effect on the talent pool would bring the lower players up, and the higher level players down but in the end the quality of the competition would go up because there would be far less landslide 2-0 series with obviously dominate players. Or the lower players could get cut because they are effecting the team's results, which seems like the proper thing a team would do.
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I got really excited when Ret and Huk joined Team Liquid. At the time Team Liquid was, IMO, the best foreign team or at least working in that direction, if the team play was actually a format that was played rather than the 1v1 tournaments. But since the competition has never focused on the team aspect of the structures within the industry the team more or less fell off and the focus to dominate was lost.
Right now I think EG and Complexity are playing to win, but they are still focused and put their resources towards 1v1 results. In my head I had imagined EG vs Team Liquid slug fests and rivalry that lasted for years. But what do we have? We have a handful of winners and all others get swept aside and their work does not become a successful accomplishment.
The team aspect also adds an extra dimension of gaming, "which goalie is going to start?", "who is going to take down this guy?" Instead of "wow, this player was knocked out in the first round..." This type of layer can do alot to add to the commentating and stories being generated from the games being played. Instead of narrowly focusing on an individuals skills to win a single game or BO3, the story could go to a players ability in particular match ups, ACE's, who are they going to bring out next....blah blah. It adds color to the game without changing the game at all.
I think it would pay for esports to look to established sporting structures for guidance.
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On November 25 2011 10:13 StarVe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2011 09:50 BFCrimson wrote:On November 25 2011 08:52 Coramoor wrote:
there is a hilariously pathetic reaction by a lot of "fans" of this game in this thread
Random Fan: We want to watch Destiny, Incontrol and Tyler cause we know who they are, so we won't tune in otherwise
The problem with this thinking is that none of these players are any good by comparison, someone mentioned ostojiy getting an invite to blizzcon and doing nothing, sure that's true, but he obliterated Destiny at MLG, he's a top GM, has shown commitment and can't get signed to a top team, yet Destiny gets signed cause he's obnoxious on his stream and gamers seem to like that, so he gets 5000 viewers a night
Personality is important, no doubt about it but when it comes down to it, if you want this game to grow and be popular(on a scale outside what we currently have) you need to teach the good players to be personalities, and not have the personalities become the main players, cause otherwise we'll npever be able to match Korea
Edit: spelling fail Btw: Ostojiy never has even played Destiny? Did you make that up? He beat him this MLG, look it up on Liquipedia.
Ah I see now, linked his TLPD profile and it said he had never even played Destiny my mistake. However, my point to the poster I quoted still stands that such a position regarding those players, especially with the Ostojiy example (he only played one more match after Destiny and was 2-0ed by DDE), is pretty extreme
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I think a real problem for these live events even with online qualifiers are travel stipends. look at the IEM, there were several qualified players who canceled their participation since they or their team couldn't afford the trip (transcontinental flights are not cheap). take stephano (ye, i know you hear this name to often), if he hadn't won the online qualifier with all a full stipend, i'm pretty sure his team wouldn't have sent him.
i also think that most of the current tournaments are way to top-heavy considering the prizepool.
IPL did the right thing with still $1k for the ranks 17-32.
i don't think that a prize pool like MLG's with $120k spread only in the top 8 is helping for new blood.
as already stated the rich teams with a decent history like EG, TL, fnatic, dignitas, mouz etc can afford to attend these tournaments even if they don't get a qualifacion seed with a travel stipend whereas some not so wealthy teams can't afford these live events at all when they don't win a online qualification + stipend.
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The game is too volatile to concentrate on those top players dominating in quarterly/monthly marathon tournaments. So many resources go into putting the spot light on these guys(Idra, Huk, Naniwa for example) and realistically any player can work their way to the top of a single tournament on a good day(Leenock). Where was Leenock's spot light? How could you ever predict or narrate such an outcome? Having a playing field that is possible to analyse is important and it becomes very difficult for viewers to become emotionally attached if results are unpredictable. Right now, who is going to win Dreamhack? Anyone, that's who. Right now I sit through many marathon tournaments that I have no emotional attachment to with the result of either being very excited and happy(Huk winning Orlando) to not even bothering watching the finals because I don't really care for the finalists(Naniwa/Leenock)
As a side note, we all know that the preferred winner of MLG Providence would have been Naniwa, right? Because so much effort, drama and story was going on at the time that Leenock winning was essentially letting the air out of a balloon slowly rather than letting it pop(Naniwa winning). The balloon popping would have been fantastic for the foreign SC2 scene, fantastic for the Swedish community etc but this chance was missed and it is because of the format of the competition. Why have a Final National Championship tournament where this type of thing could even happen? You don't see the league's last place team win the Stanley Cup(not saying Leenock is a bad player, just saying he came from the bottom).
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The downside of open tournaments, that no one has mentioned yet that I've seen, is fatigue.
A player who has to play through a bunch of shitty players on his way through an open bracket is going to be tired. Even if you have a 1% chance of losing to those shitty players, you still tire fighting your way through them and risking elimination at every turn, and as tense as the games may be for that reason, that doesn't make them good games, and by the time you get to the stage where the good players are facing off, they are often fatigued and making mistakes they would not normally make, which reduces the quality of the subsequent games for the spectators. We see this happen at MLGs - runs like Leenock where they blitz the open bracket then blitz the winner's bracket too are anomalies, not the norm.
Invitational tournaments are an effort to avoid this - players are fully rested for all their matches and play much better overall.
Each method has their ups and downs, and I would prefer to see a mix of tournaments rather than exclusively invitationals, or excusively open tournaments.
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I kinda agree, only 50% of a line up max. may consist out of invitees, to keep good chance for the new(er) players.
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Sundance and Carmac have explained this much better than most people here. Checkout the TL interviews with both of them. Pretty much sc2 is too young atm to no be driven by celebrity players. But they are aware of the problems that doing business that way has. We already know that atm sc2 is a popular game to watch but in playerbase its actually decreasing and leagues know that what keeps this esport alive is not the number of celebritys and fans of players that a game has but the playerbase and upcoming players. The current predicament is how to reward and encourage amateurs into getting to pro level. Invite tourneys arent the way and every big tournament and league knows it. If new talent doesnt come out after the game has settled then we will see the game slowly die like quake and we arent going to see another dynasty of starcraft and a stable esports game in the west. But atm theres still 2 more expansions and alot of hype so we can worry about things like that later. IEM switched to qualifications this year and mlg is working on recognising korean pro status as well as sorting out their own competitions. DH has a few open spots but they are more of an organisation that celebrates gaming culture than a gaming league.
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On November 25 2011 11:04 infinity2k9 wrote:
I just want to mention one of what i thought was the worst example of this; that 8 person female tournament with the 10k prize, i forget the acronym. How could the invites possibly be decided? If there's never been this scale of event before who's to say new participants wouldn't show up and enter. Wouldn't that be the point of an event like this in the first place... otherwise, what is it?
Really at the end of it a 10k tournament came and went (same prize pool as TSL2 which is funny to think, how big of a deal we took it) without much exposure interest or anything.
If there were no interest there wouldn't have been a 10k prize pool. If someone is willing to pay for such a prize pool for whatever format, who are you to say that's a bad idea? If no one is watching then it just won't happen again. No one is willing to shell out money into a black hole.
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I agree with the overall idea of the meritocratic system, but for now, I think there are just a ton of tourneys, all fighting for attention, plus there are really only a hand full of top tier players. This is why invites became big, to get attention.
I think as time goes on more and more of the scrubs will be weeded out and pure merit systems will emerge as the dominant form.
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I disagree with about everything thats in the OP. Imo with invations its much more likely to get better players than with opens, because in sc2 the better player dosnt always win (especially 5 series in a row). Also the huge time and work that is requiered to orgnaize a open, could be used for more important things like production value.
Also the OP acts like its the tournament organizers job to let new players have a chance to shine. It is not. Their job is to get viewers so their sponsors get happy.
Besides, only ignorant americans didnt think thorzain had a good chance to win TSL3.
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On November 25 2011 16:44 Sea_Food wrote:
Besides, only ignorant americans didnt think thorzain had a good chance to win TSL3.
Thats just not true.
Thorzain played in like no online tourney and had like 0 exposure before TSL.
Either you were a "fan" because of his WC3 past, a player that got beaten by him on ladder or you had not that much of a chacne to know him.
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The central issue is fatigue. Once you know you are good, you still can't prove it all the time any time 24/7. You need to rest, and choose your fights wisely. If the very top players always had to go through the lower tiers to re-prove themselves, the sheer exhaustion would not allow them to play their best when they reach the final stages. Meritocracy is just a word, depends exactly what one means by it. The top players have proven their merit already, that's why they have advantages. No one has appeared out of nowhere at the top, everyone has fought tooth and nail their way to there.
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EPT
