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On April 10 2012 09:58 Belisarius wrote:
I have long thought SC2 should use a ranking system similar to that used in tennis. The yearly rollover gives much more consistent seeds and avoids the problem of one guy lucking his way to a finals and getting a high seed while better players are mashed together in early rounds because of one bad day.
I think you're wrong about the teamplay aspect. Training in tennis is fundamentally different, and is far more individual. It occurs mostly between a player, his coach and an otherwise empty court. Starcraft 2's does not, and surrounding great players with a variety of supporting partners is invaluable. Practice partners are not a minor issue that can be waved away by saying "players need them, sure, but..."
Also, aside from just finding practice partners, there is the issue of having a group of people to practice with who you can rely on not to share anything about your practice. Tennis doesn't really have a meta game, and you can't prepare specific strategies for a specific match in the same way you can in sc2. When a korean team has a player in a gsl final, they pool alot of their players together to help that one player get specific builds set up for each map and because they are a team in a team house, they can easily and securely do this without any risk of information leaks.
Also, tennis doesn't require the same ammount of practice that sc2 does (or at least in the same way.) Tennis players at the top level are generally older, and during their teens just played at tennis clubs. Starcraft doesn't have this infrastructure of "starcraft clubs" where teenagers can practice all day long, and as the average age of sc2 players is much lower, they can't spend 8-10 years practicing every weekend and after school to get to where they are, they need a long time spending 10 hours a day training (in most cases.) And without the team setup (this is korea i'm talking about) where you can have bed and food provided and a computer so you can just train, i don't think the same results would be given.
Edit: also with reference to your discussion of having a global ranking, i also feel this is alot more feasible in tennis then in starcraft. In tennis all major opens are sort of "run" by the same group of people in the sense that you have the same top players at each event, and each event coordinates with the others. In starcraft you have hundreds of independant events, and you very rarely get the same players at the same event. While teamliquid does have elo rankings of all the players, people will never view that as the be all end all of player rankings as there are so many little complications which that cannot include. What if you have worlds best pvt, but shitty pvz and pvp, where do you belong on the ranking? what if polt goes to four euro tournaments and stomps a bunch of mid tier foreigners, while mkp loses a really close gsl match vs bomber, should this be enough to put polt above mkp on the scale? How do you compare two players who havn't played each other in months but who both won their respective tournaments?
A quantitive ranking system like tennis has only really works if most/all of the top players are at every event, something which doesn't happen in sc2.
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Your entertaining the idea that team leagues should be disbanded is absurd.
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On April 10 2012 11:07 Pasargadae wrote:
Your entertaining the idea that team leagues should be disbanded is absurd.
I have to agree with this fine gentleman.
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I'm really looking forward to 5 more pages of people beating to death the idea that team leagues should stay while ignoring everything else
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Team leagues are the best thing in Starcraft. Can you imagine the viewership for a GSTL style ( in a studio, live and well produced ) EG vs TL match?
In my opinion individual league weekends are getting stale, I'd rather have a western GSTL tournament that runs for months and has a grand final just like the GSTL/Proleague than a MLG/IPL/whatever else weekend every week.
The rest of your post is good, but saying Team Leagues should go away is ridiculous.
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i am a (very low level) professional tennis player so i just wanted to respond to some of your points from a primarily tennis aspect since its what youre taking your model from and im sorry if im restating anything i didnt read anything but op
*starting from the pro tennis model as the future of sc2*
1. The ranking system includes tournaments from the majors you watch on tv all the way to tournaments with a total prize pool of 10k which when its one organization running all of them still has a pretty iffy ranking system it will be much harder for someone arbitrarily judging how much points each tournament is worth and youre going to end up with an "official" ranking that is no better than say teamliquids or gosugamers
2. this is done more to get nontennis fans interested in tennis which is a hard thing to do for sc2 but still important anyway
3. not rly going to touch this one but sponsorship in sc2 is always going to be an uphill battle and its entirely in the sponsors control how they handle them
5. the main three ways tennis tournaments make their money is thru atp sponsors, selling broadcast rights obviously but they also get a large amount of the money from selling the tournament's site rights to the various cities. the last two options arent really viable so unless someone like intel is willing to put forward alot of money ad revenue can only go so far. just a side note all tournament entry fees are free to players and at the higher level tournaments everyone in them gets paid just to show up
6. davis cup is the closest thing to a team league tennis has and look how much excitement there is in it (yes i know alot is due to national pride)
7. this would be great but unfortunately tennis players are required to give short prematch interviews and postmatch interviews if they win and sign some autographs as they leave the court. also they get hounded pretty badly at the practice courts
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As someone who used to be a ranked USTA member, you are wrong about there not being a meta-game. I'm not going to fully detail it, and it's obviously more subtle (and minor) than sc2, but try watching a youtube tennis strategy channel like yellowfuzzyballs. A basic concept is neither player knowing what percentage shot the other player is taking. I had a weak cross court backhand for over a year and I would try to hit 70% shots during the first couple of game in the hopes that the other player would not detect this weakness. Even if the 30% error connects on a couple, he won't know that I'm shooting at 70% until he's seen the shot 10+ times.
The main technical difference I see between tennis and sc2 is the number of standard deviations between skill level. The world #1 tennis player is much better than the world #10 (and would very rarely lose a single bo5 match), but in sc2 world #1 vs world #10 is not as favored.
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2. Focus on individual rivalries. Again, we already do this. Polt-vs-Stephano. MVP-vs-MMA. TLPD and Liquipedia provide an invaluable service in giving us the stats for matchups. Hopefully, Starcraft can develop epic rivalries like Nadal-Federer. Stories make sports more compelling.
SC2 has more compelling rivalries than tennis. A ranking system would actually hurt the hype for a big matchup. Polt vs Stephano has a lot more mystique around it than #7 vs #9 (their rank on SC2earnings.com, if it was based on true skill they'd be even lower).
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i kinda thought the sc1 pro scene back long ag, with 1v1 1v1 2v2 2v2 1v1 set matchs was like my highschool tennis club, we played a best of 7, with 1v1s and 2v2 agaisnt other teams it was soo fun
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One issue with the Pro Tennis Model right now is that the lower level players will not be able to sustain themselves unless viewership, sales and ultimately sponsorship increases.
Korea's success with the Proleague was being able to sell individuals, while still promoting teams and providing salaries for team members who train the ace individual to continue to progress without giving up their tactics/strategies to rivals.
Either way, the most important thing to build up is public access and passion for the sport, 2nd is to provide at least 100-200 people at the top enough money to play competitively, not just 2 dozen.
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The whole Starcraft team system really throws thing for a loop and makes it its own sport, if it wasn't enough already. I do think this article is pretty sweet though, a lot of parallels between the two sports.
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Both are individual games. Unlike team sports, such as soccer or basketball, the game hinges on the performance of a single person, not a team.
well shame on your for missing this week's SKT vs KT grand final. 
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yeah sometimes tennis isnt balanced either
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On April 10 2012 09:13 Cybren wrote:
Why can't the future of Pro-SC2 be Pro-SC2?
This for sure. IDC about damn tennis srry tennis fans  ( I like my starcraft too much!!!
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On April 10 2012 11:28 Callistodusk wrote:
I'm really looking forward to 5 more pages of people beating to death the idea that team leagues should stay while ignoring everything else
Everyone is saying that they mostly agree with the OP. Talking about why you disagree with something just tends to take up more space than saying why you agree with it.
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Man i wish i could have written like you just did. I have thought this way for a while, though i disagree on teams, i believe people do care about teams, but its like Fifa soccer, for most guys there is no homecourt because they are in fucking england or spain or wherever for a friendly against a team of people also bought from around the world so its not like its a real homecourt advantage, and their will be fans for both sides, but it would still be less structured than that of BW which sort of mimics Baseball. Actually Baseball would work for a team league, and tennis for a Singles league, but thats just my opinion, or it could develop into its own system.
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While many rag on you for trying to compare an athletic sport, and an e-Sport, I believe what you have to say is very interesting and I can see how there are similarities. For those that have not played the sport or are unfamiliar with it, a Tennis match is very much like Starcraft 1v1. You are out there on your own, the matches can be grueling and hours long grind. You barely get any time for rest except a brief pause between sets or switching sides. Of course there's not pausing in SC2 like this, but the sheer test of mental willpower is very similar. When you are pushed to your limit out on the tennis court, all you have left is guts and grit. Tennis may be boring to watch at times, but this is a real tough sport on the human body.
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Interesting points.
Tennis may be very similar to SC2. We could learn from them. But we shouldnt copy them 100% without thinking.
So like many other I disagree on the teams part.
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Really interesting read, I would have never thought of two completely different sports having so much in common. Wonder what it would be like if SC was more of a team vs team environment, obviously still 1v1, but the team leagues seem to be something i like watching, usually again to cheer for my favourite players. For some reason nothing in SC gives me that crazy OMG feeling than seeing two individuals play against each other in a best of 7 at the finals. I don't know if you can get a team vs team environment that compares enough in entrainment value to make it the dominate structure in SC2 but it would be interesting. It would then definitely be a huge factor in a player move like huk from Liquid to EG. Even thought it inst a big deal when a player changes teams because its such an individual game, i do find my self having to watch Liquid vs EG team battles just to see the rivalry which makes things entertaining for me.
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It wouldn't work because SC2 is not as big as tennis. If you take teams out of the equation, no sponsors will give a shit about each players rating or whatever, and no up and coming players would ever get a chance to make it. The team system works because the big name players get paid a lot by the team, they place top 10 or whatever at events and make the sponsors happy, and the rest of the team survives off the top player's results while training until they can become big players themselves. Putting this system into place would eliminate everyone except the top few.
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EPT
