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I agree with Diamond.
Having completely open qualifiers is the way to go. You can't baby the foreign scene and then expect it to try and compete with the Koreans when the tournament rolls around. I'd rather watch Koreans take 8/10 of the Qualifier Spots and show amazing games against eachother instead of seeing 4/10 North Americans 3/10 Koreans 3/10 Europeans and then have the Koreans go on to destroy their foreign competition 2-0 first round.
If the foreign scene wants to survive, they have to PLAY like they want to survive. It shouldn't be acceptable as a team manager having your players only work 2-3 hours a day and then go off and do other things. There's a reason the Korean system is what it is; It's because it works.
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On January 25 2012 19:37 ZeitgeisT wrote:Show nested quote +Let’s start with event organizers. I’m sorry but this invitation system needs to end. We can’t have 95% of the players being invited and 5% qualifying through qualifiers. It has to be the other way around. I get the need to invite a few big name players to attract viewers. But instead of inviting 30 players and qualifying 2, do the opposite and invite a handful and have qualifiers for the rest. I disagree, when you are going to invite 2 out of 32 players and the rest has to qualifiy, guess who's participating in the qualifiers. This leads to an even harder qualification for the less known ones. And only if the lesser known beat some of the big names they are going to get recognized.
And that's exactly his point. I don't understand you. If you don't even have the chance to beat one, how could you get recognition ? Region locked qualifiers and no more invite should be the norm.
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That chart is actually not even close to a big deal. Its actually a relatively standard cycle for games to get a major mainstream following (the top of the chart) then fall off a bit. Those numbers actually remind me a bit of the halo games were halo 2 and 3 would have 1 million people and at times 1.2 million people playing online at launch and then over time that dipped down to around 500,000 (reach dipped to about a 100k but thats more because of reach itself) and then just diddnt go down any further because thats the passionate group of people who play your game and only want to play your game online.
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if you follow the scene closely enough you will find it quite easy to notice up and coming players. i think people are just to casual and dont follow the scene as closely as say a fanatical man united fan or a green bay packers fan. i myself watch every cup i can in Europe and most of the SEA cups not to mention all the major lan tournaments. i feel most people just watch the major tournaments and have this bubble they live in where all they see are the huks/idras/stephanos/naniwas when in reality great playerse are playing great games in great cups every day. just as there are casual players there are also casual fans which i think makes up a large majority of the scene. the fact that most are ignorant and ill informed doesnt make something true.
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On January 26 2012 05:58 Erasme wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 19:37 ZeitgeisT wrote:Let’s start with event organizers. I’m sorry but this invitation system needs to end. We can’t have 95% of the players being invited and 5% qualifying through qualifiers. It has to be the other way around. I get the need to invite a few big name players to attract viewers. But instead of inviting 30 players and qualifying 2, do the opposite and invite a handful and have qualifiers for the rest. I disagree, when you are going to invite 2 out of 32 players and the rest has to qualifiy, guess who's participating in the qualifiers. This leads to an even harder qualification for the less known ones. And only if the lesser known beat some of the big names they are going to get recognized. And that's exactly his point. I don't understand you. If you don't even have the chance to beat one, how could you get recognition ? Region locked qualifiers and no more invite should be the norm.
And how would region locked qualifiers differ from "invites"?
If a qualifier grants you a spot later in the tournament, it is nothing more than another form of invite. The concept of competition is based on invites- they only differ in nature of selection. A BoX can be a rule of selection to decide which player advances and which doesn't. Group play selects the players for the next round. So given a certain spot in any round that is to be obtained via region locked qualifier is the same as saying "there are guaranteed X invites for region Y, selection will be through rule Z".
I can't say if there will ever be "one right" rule of selection. But one rule of selection isn't necessarily more or less arbitrary than the other. Secondly, there is no implication it would solve the core issue. Even in a world where every tournament would use region-locked qualifiers exclusively, the worst imaginable case would be that one or more "region-representatives" would be constantly demolished. It would grant those representatives their 5min of fame on the world stage. And those would still be the Huks and Naniwas of today. Because they'd win every fucking qualifier of their region.
My point is, neither model does change anything much, since it has little to do with it. It doesn't solve the problem, but only shifts it one layer further down.
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On January 26 2012 03:36 johnnywup wrote:
20 hours a day? is there a source O_O
yeah, that is too little for Flash, this is slander to Flash' reputation unless you provide a source
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On January 26 2012 07:04 rotegirte wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2012 05:58 Erasme wrote:On January 25 2012 19:37 ZeitgeisT wrote:Let’s start with event organizers. I’m sorry but this invitation system needs to end. We can’t have 95% of the players being invited and 5% qualifying through qualifiers. It has to be the other way around. I get the need to invite a few big name players to attract viewers. But instead of inviting 30 players and qualifying 2, do the opposite and invite a handful and have qualifiers for the rest. I disagree, when you are going to invite 2 out of 32 players and the rest has to qualifiy, guess who's participating in the qualifiers. This leads to an even harder qualification for the less known ones. And only if the lesser known beat some of the big names they are going to get recognized. And that's exactly his point. I don't understand you. If you don't even have the chance to beat one, how could you get recognition ? Region locked qualifiers and no more invite should be the norm. And how would region locked qualifiers differ from "invites"? If a qualifier grants you a spot later in the tournament, it is nothing more than another form of invite. The concept of competition is based on invites- they only differ in nature of selection. A BoX can be a rule of selection to decide which player advances and which doesn't. Group play selects the players for the next round. So given a certain spot in any round that is to be obtained via region locked qualifier is the same as saying "there are guaranteed X invites for region Y, selection will be through rule Z". I can't say if there will ever be "one right" rule of selection. But one rule of selection isn't necessarily more or less arbitrary than the other. Secondly, there is no implication it would solve the core issue. Even in a world where every tournament would use region-locked qualifiers exclusively, the worst imaginable case would be that one or more "region-representatives" would be constantly demolished. It would grant those representatives their 5min of fame on the world stage. And those would still be the Huks and Naniwas of today. Because they'd win every fucking qualifier of their region. My point is, neither model does change anything much, since it has little to do with it. It doesn't solve the problem, but only shifts it one layer further down.
I think you are missing the point, that as it is now, the best way to get success (ie become a pro by getting sponsors) is to already have success. Because even if you are good, if you aren't already well known you wont get into any tournaments and thus get no recognition. I don't see how your argument works against that.
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I think esports needs to take a cue from some other individual sports and implement a global ranking (and bring it to the forefront of player consideration).
A really good model is Tennis and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). Playing and placing in Several major tournaments contribute to a players ranking points, and a ladder is kept for all players. There are still mega celebrities like Federer that draw the crowds, but when you watch a tournament, you always keep your eyes on the guys with single digits next to their name, whether or not you've heard of them before.
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On January 25 2012 23:32 IdrA wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2012 23:10 BrosephBrostar wrote:On January 25 2012 23:03 IdrA wrote:On January 25 2012 22:39 -ForeverAlone- wrote:On January 25 2012 22:28 IdrA wrote:
people seem to think foreign teams actively avoid picking up new players or something. if you're worth it teams are going to be scrambling to get you. very very few people invest enough effort to be good or to create a fanbase. those that have have joined teams or been hired by companies.
you dont join a team and then get good, you get good and then join a team. That's the problem the OP wants to highlight. The infrastructure to get good in NA is not as good in Korea, and this creates a selection bias. There aren't too many 15+ year olds in NA that can just turn their life into full time gaming, unless they already have a lot of money or a very supportive family. The concept of B-teams here doesn't really exist. I mean if we look at the top level pros on the scene today that support themselves only with SC2, a lot of them are there because they had the first mover advantage (HuK) or had the chance to develop before (you). This is made worse by the fact that a lot of tournaments are mostly invite-based. how do you think i got that chance to develop? i ignored school and didnt have a social life for 2 years in order to win a tournament and move to korea at 18 to sit in a house and play starcraft1 with 0 return for another 3 years huk played sc2 all day on a shitty computer during the beta when there was no money in it and did everything he could to get to korea and then spent a year+ practicing in a korean house. most a team pros dont make salaries in korea. none of the b teamers do, the bottom of the barrel doesnt get to live in the house, they just get the priviledge of playing with the team if theyre good enough for people to want to practice with them. you have to sacrifice pretty much everything while you're on your way up. koreans are better because hundreds of them are willing to do it, a handful of nonkoreans are. I think the point is that you both took advantage of the Korean system to get where you are now. Maybe I don't understand the situation well enough but it doesn't seem like western teams are offering the kind of opportunity you got with estro and cj. Does EG have unsalaried practice partners that you play with who could possibly work their way up to full members? i gave up a ton to get to korea. its much much easier to get to korea and take advantage of that system now. but except for a very few, everyone who comes leaves again after a couple months. people just dont put in the effort. they dont deserve to be succesful.
That's the obvious conclusion, but then you have to ask what's the point of the non-Korean system? Do these teams exist only to support a handful of players who already proved themselves in the Korean system? Why not just sponsor a Korean team directly then like FXO did?
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First off, the game has barely been out for 2 years and we're already calling it a shrinking scene? I can't agree with that at all. Second, the two friends I know who are high masters are both associated with big name teams. Plenty of teams are introducing academies or B-team efforts. Complexity, vVv, and Fnatic are all some that come to mind. You can definitely get noticed as a good player on NA.
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Why are you making the assumption that people on the ladder are playing for the goal of getting recognized/go pro?
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After reading all the comments and the OP, I'd love to respond to many people individually but I don't have the patience haha. Thus, I'll try to generalize.
There seems to be two main points that is being stressed throughout this thread and that is:
(1) Tournaments should drop the heavy focus on "Invitationals" and emphasize qualifiers. The reasoning is, if the players are so good that you want to invite them, they'll make it through the qualifiers regardless. These qualifiers would allow for some no names to have the chance to fight for these spots while surprising some people by taking out some pro named players. I'd say this would also stir more discussion because there would be questions as to how good the player is, kinda like the fame Cruncher got for taking out Idra.
(2) Qualifiers should be region locked and then just have a qualifier for each main region. Now the question arises, if we have 60 spots, split equally between NA/EU/KR, then when everyone competes, maybe 8 of the 20 from NA and 6 of the 20 from EU would be lower quality game-play than the top 20 Korean players. If this is the case, obviously we can't expect tournament organizers to just accept that their content is going to be of lesser quality. I'd say the best way to deal with this hypothetical scenario would be to alter the ratio to maybe 15/15/40 until you see foreigners reach a skill level similar to the Koreans. A 15/15/40 split may not even be an increase in NA competitors because they might've only planned to invite 15 NA gamers anyway. Except at least with the qualifier, no names can knock out semi-pro gamers like EGAxslav and get their chance at a legitimate tournament. Who knows, maybe the no name starts practicing for 10 hours a day for the next 2 weeks until the tournament and he ends up placing in the top 10, shocking everyone.
I agree with Doomsville, tournaments need qualifiers to give no names a place to get noticed.
Some high level players like Idra and MorroW were making points how it is easy to get noticed, but they're just looking at the highest level of play. Yes, I agree, if I was as good as Idra, there are places I'd get noticed. I'd play in the online tournaments and would beat TSL_Revival, Violet, or FXOLucky half the time and take these $100 cups. Some relatively high tier team would notice me and I'd get the opportunity to shine.
But what about players who have the same skill level as a player like VileSpanishiwa? He's a great player for sure, but I'd say there are about 30 other NA players just as good as him that get little to no recognition at all. He has luck to thank for the majority of his fans. If there were more cups or qualifiers, which were also region-locked, Spanishiwa, and other players with similar skill level, could show off his skill against the high level players. I think people would be surprised. They'd see that there are probably about 10-15 "no name" NA players that take games or quite often even bo3 series against some of their favorite NA players.
Now our industry is only so big so we cant support all these no namers. I'm not asking anyone to try and support worse players simply because their NA gamers. What I am asking is, give the no namers a chance and some will surprise you. Now if a new "no namer" became popular, he's probably pulling viewership and fans away from other gamers, so now maybe VileSpanishiwa only gets 1800 viewers watching his stream rather than 2000 because 200 are watching this other guy now. Good. We shouldn't have the #35 ranked NA player (don't actually know his rank) be so popular while the #30, or #40 aren't even sponsored. More qualifiers and less invites would lessen the attachment to worse players in my opinion.
I'm not trying to offend any player I'm mentioning I just need a relevant example. If all the vilespanishiwa and QxGDestiny fans started watching these qualifiers to support their favorite player and ended up watching them consistently lose to players you don't even know, it would make it more difficult to support them. Now I'm happy for their success but Destiny, with his record and results, should not be pulling in 5000 viewers when he streams. He has a personality though and that does go far, but more qualifiers to showcase a bigger variety of talent would further emphasize skill over "name." If Destiny or Spanishiwa just get invited, then even if they do lose they were still able to get aired on this big tournament and they might've not been able to make it through the qualifier if there was one.
EGmachine is one of my favorite zerg players. He was the first sc2 pro player I ever watched. I saw his run through MLG Dallas 2010 to the semifinals and I instantly fell in love with competitive SC2. Now although I love EGmachine, he isn't exactly the best player. If there were more qualifiers, we could see EGmachine get knocked out by a "no name". He's one of the lower tier professional NA players that would have to step up his play.
Everyone needs to also understand that the main NA event that showcases our talent is MLG and for the past 8 months more Koreans have been in the open bracket than the MLG Pool Play.
Where am I going with this? Many no name players had a more difficult run through MLG than many pool play players because they had to play against MVPNoblesse( Code A/S Terran) rather than EGIncontroL and LiquidTyler. This more difficult bracket made it even harder for no names to shine.
Yes, I agree NA doesn't have any hidden Idra's or Nerchio's, but I do think there are a lot of hidden EGMachine's and VileSpanishiwa's that nobody ever hears about.
I'm glad thread was posted and I really enjoyed reading all the comments. Went off track sometimes but for the most part, it's a great discussion.
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The point about inviting less players won't be an idea any tournament organizer would follow. These tournaments are all a business. They dish out prizes and some prize money for more publicity for the sponsors. How do they gain more publicity? By getting viewers. Break 10,000 spectators! Break 25,000! Break 50,000! Break 100,000!!! More sponsors will be attracted to give some money in for ads and promotions and such. The gaming industry thrives off this in terms of live events.
But the most important question to ask is who do people want to watch?
Do people want to watch a pool of 50 unknown players and then 14 known famous popular players? No.
People, and this goes for me as well, want to watch the Koreans, the NA players, the best EU players....simply put people want to watch the best that the game has to offer. I think everyone would rather watch a bunch of games between the best players than see lower level players fill up the qualifiers and take away invite spots for these lower level players. I'd rather watch Idra, Morrow, Kas, Dimaga over some lower level players who haven't really showcased much talent. Over the past year, the people who have fallen off the radar deserved to fall off the radar. Some new names have come up the ranks and the best are still here. Players like Axslav, drewbie, cruncher, dde, TT1, LZgamer, have all had their moments early in the game but have really fallen off the radar. Players like elfi, stephano, titan, and even HuK and Thorzain have all climbed up the ladder of fame practicing however they did to reach the top and be noticed by the SC2 community. Players like Huk (once he got to the top), Idra, Naniwa, Morrow, and Kas have always been in the public's eye and have consistently performed at a high level to stay there. It's the same pattern in Korea. Fruitdealer is off the radar. DRG is at the top after climbing a crazy ladder. And MVP has always been there.
You are right about the structure of Code B then Code A presents a clear cut way to get your name out there but so do all these other foreign tournaments. There are qualifying spots, albeit only a few, but they exist. If you're good enough to qualify and play then you are good enough. If not, go and practice. Why do you think Koreans practice so damn much and then go on to practice some more, because if you aren't that good and if you aren't practicing that much then you aren't going through to Code B, let's not even talk about Code A qualifiers and how hard they are. In Korea the way up the chain is against all the other people going up the chain with you but also against the current of current pros being dropped by even better more daunting players.In the end, players are as good as they are. It doesn't really matter who they play in the qualifiers. There's a reason why the opponent was there and sometimes you get easier opponents and sometimes you get harder opponents.
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illsick
United States1770 Posts
On January 26 2012 09:09 SirRobin wrote:
But what about players who have the same skill level as a player like VileSpanishiwa? He's a great player for sure, but I'd say there are about 30 other NA players just as good as him that get little to no recognition at all. He has luck to thank for the majority of his fans. If there were more cups or qualifiers, which were also region-locked, Spanishiwa, and other players with similar skill level, could show off his skill against the high level players. I think people would be surprised. They'd see that there are probably about 10-15 "no name" NA players that take games or quite often even bo3 series against some of their favorite NA players.
Now our industry is only so big so we cant support all these no namers. I'm not asking anyone to try and support worse players simply because their NA gamers. What I am asking is, give the no namers a chance and some will surprise you. Now if a new "no namer" became popular, he's probably pulling viewership and fans away from other gamers, so now maybe VileSpanishiwa only gets 1800 viewers watching his stream rather than 2000 because 200 are watching this other guy now. Good. We shouldn't have the #35 ranked NA player (don't actually know his rank) be so popular while the #30, or #40 aren't even sponsored. More qualifiers and less invites would lessen the attachment to worse players in my opinion.
MLG has an open bracket
NASL has qualifiers
lots of online cups
IEM has regional qualifiers (illusion and gatored able to get recognition here)
IPL3 had qualifiers too and ontop of that, had an open bracket
HSC had NA qualifiers, KawaiiRice and Attero? They didn't even make it out of group play and they did the best in the qualifiers (except violet).
those "big" NA names you listed like Machine are barely invited to tournaments, mostly through qualifiers like everyone else. NA scene is not very deep in talent at all, they have opportunities like the rest.
what tournaments in NA are exclusively invite only?
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http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=302498
What do you guys think about this lineup?
It's getting more like celebrity contest with a tiny bit of good players but players who are invited are famous for being famous.
On the other hand if we treat eSport as a buissness, then it's all about viewers - that's where tourneys earn money, viewers generate sponsors. There's probably no way to change it, but it really sadens me that it's going more towards celebrities than good players. I'm wondering, maybe more of TL attack stuff should be done to make REALLY good players more known?
I'm pretty sure most of EU GM players would easily advance off of a group in such cup, probably even placed top3 with lucky bracket. I understand that people might want to watch idra over some mid GM player, on the other hand the skill gap between top50 GM and idra's caliber players is surprisingly small.
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One of the major points the original poster wanted to bring up is that we need new blood to keep SC2 alive as a sport.
Idra is right that players need to work hard to get the skills to get into tournaments and build up a fan base.
That being said, the cost of entry is very high as things stand and it only will get more difficult. If you look at other sports, people train in football from an early age, being involved in local teams at their school and finally at their university. Its after years of work that people end up being offered a contract.
The point I want to bring up is that SC2 has these small weekly tournaments, but it doesn't have environments where budding pros could be trained to climb the echelons. The Collegiate Starleague already exists, but I don't think its necessarily meeting this end, not in a way it can be compared to the CFL, for example, and there certainly is no system feeding into the CSL (not that I'm implying that the CSL should feed tournaments but that there be a structure in which people could train). I wonder how such a system could be developed. Just as college sports is celebrated, semi-pro Starcraft should be as well, not entirely unlike the AHL Day9 created.
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On January 26 2012 04:59 DoomsVille wrote:
You guys are getting too caught up on the graph/statistics. Let's focus on the concept.
It's hard for foreigners to make a name for themselves because of invites and a lack of opportunity to showcase their talents. Focus on that and the issues around that.
There are plenty of opportunities to make oneself known. Most players who get to mid grandmasters on NA feel they're being cheated because no one knows who they are, and whine about how exclusive the scene is, instead of just practicing their ass off for a few years until they are good enough to win tournaments and get invited.
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You can't marginalise the best players - they are who people want to see.
The fact that Korea seems to have the best players can not be denied.
Develop players though interim tourneys, non- 95% invitational ones, develop a culture of e-sports and a motivation for players to keep going beyond the, " I've made it to GM, now back to real life", and you may have a solution. However, can anybody give evidence of a non-Korean who has made a career out of e-sports? I mean someone who has raised a family or spent the past 15 years playing stacraft (successfully, don't say the Graken coz he hasn't won shit recently). My point is that it is not a part of our culture. In the UK I get more love for saying that I want to be on X factor than being a pro-gamer and there is where the motivation really hits me.
There are bigger fish to fry.
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maybe our best foreigners just arent good yet.........bronze league to gsl anyone?
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EPT
