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On June 26 2012 08:37 Oblivion753 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 05:45 chillpenguin wrote:On June 26 2012 05:33 lost_artz wrote:On June 26 2012 05:28 chillpenguin wrote:
Have you ever thought that maybe there is something inherently embibed into the Korean/Asian race that makes them better at RTS games? I mean, anyone who has ever watched professional Basketball, Football, Track&Field will see that there's something about the Black race that makes them better at those sports (being taller, faster, stronger, etc). Why can't there be something similar for E-sports?
If I went to NBA.com or whatever and made a thread complaining about how there aren't enough white people in the NBA, how I would be more interested in the NBA if only there were more personalities I could relate to, etc, I would be called a racist and banned. However that's like all people talk about on this site, and no one even thinks twice about it possibly being racist. Everyone has thought that at some point. But that doesn't make it true. Really all you are seeing is people who are willing to give their all to be the best they can vs. people who are content to be one of the best. If foreigners wanted to truly be on the same levels as Koreans they could be. There's nothing different between the two expect for appearance and language. But do you know that that isn't true? What if there is something about a Korean's brain that makes them better at multitasking, or something better about their wrists that makes them have more precise and quicker mouse movement? Just like some races are predisposed to be taller, faster, stronger, why can't others be predisposed for their brain's to work in different and better ways? The brain is just another part of your body like your legs or arms. It's a touchy subject, but you can't completely disregard this possibility. Are you seriously attributing Korean dominance in Starcraft to their race? Really? Not only is that an insult to the Koreans who work so hard at the game but it also silly. Do Americans suck at soccer because Brazilians and Spaniards are born with better genetics? No. Are African American athletes better at basketball because they are born with the abilities to dribble and shoot? No. Are Canadians and Russians better at hockey because they have special stick handling and skating abilities? No. The fact of the matter is that in all of these scenarios the athletes who perform the best are the ones who practice the most and work both the hardest and smartest. In Brazil they start playing samba in the streets of Sao Paulo at a very young age and put in the extra effort. The NBA is dominated by African Americans because they grow up in cities with basketball courts nearby and spend their time playing all day with their friends and competing. Like a lot of things Starcraft is a skill. And like all skills to get good at it you need to put in the effort. Koreans work harder and smarter than foreigners who are known to be lazy in their own right, and as a consequence the Koreans are dominating. As the BW pros move to sc2 we had better step our game if we want to avoid being overrun.
What the hell does samba has to do with soccer???
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I don't really think the skill gap comes from koreans being "all about winning - cheese or not!". However there is an old famous quote in soccer that states that soccer is played in the middle of the pitch and decided in the areas (in front of the goal). The same thing is true for starcraft. It might be an economical game, but it is very much decided in the engagements and aggressive play will get you trained better for those as there is simply more engagement per time. Furthermore i see a tendency when good players meet truly great players (korean vs foreigners or otherwise). The good players will be able to follow the great players as long as the game is reasonably stale. Then when the action begins you'll slowly but steadily see the great player start to get ahead. Aggressive play once again will get you trained better.
1. Should cheese/allin oriented play be so heavily shunned? Does it have any value?
No, clearly. Yes, clearly.
2. Does the concept of winning take the backseat to improving and is this good or bad? Is winning at all cost a good mentality, or is it faulty?
When did the two become mutually exclusive? Obviously performing the same 1-base all-in every single game will not challenge you much after a couple of hundred repetitions, but the notion that "aggressive play = ladder points, macro play = skill" is faulty, to put it lightly. A player doing only 1 or 2-base all-ins is about as "good" as a player who only does macro games.
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On June 27 2012 07:03 jinorazi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2012 06:59 AirbladeOrange wrote:
I feel like you're operating under the flawed assumption that the skill gap between Koreans and foreigners is growing but I'm of the opinion that it's shrinking. Then again it's tough to say because SC2 is different from Brood War and SC2 is still very new. We have some great foreigners that other people have mentioned. Thorzain, Stephano, Naniwa, Sase, Ret, ect. it could also widen as it did with bw but also large part to reducing number of foreign bw players. which i think could happen with sc2 also (many people like to move onto the new stuff). at the same time the pro-scene in korea will bring in new talents more than any other part of the world.
It's still an assumption though.
But I agree it could widen in the near future. Once most of Korea switches to SC2 there will be so many talented players on teams that have coaches and practice 10 hours a day. And like you said the foreign scene may thin out giving us less of a pool to get top players from.
But I still think the top foreigners will be able to be competitive with Koreans, probably on more of a code A level. And when I say top I mean no more than 5. But then again I'm not Nostradomus.
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Skill gap
Yes, to join the choir: Brutal, directed work ethic. TotalBiscuit nailed it in the vid above. I recently was listening to one of the EGers talk about their culture. Sorry for the crude paraphrase but it was essentially, "Yeah, we respect each other's professionalism and let the player dictate their practice regimen. I mean, if somebody is slacking, yeah we might get on their case. But that never happens because we all want to win."
No, practice regimen should be more like:
7:00-9:00 AM Countering the Nexus First (vs. Fred)
9:00-11:00 AM Baneling and zergling micro drills
11:00-12:00 PM Presentation/Lecture/Discussion on One Base Colossus (Johnny)
1:00 PM - 6:00 PM Practice your ass off
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM Weight training [credit where credit's due]
Off the cuff examples, but you get the drift.
Culture and Cheese
I always get the impression that NA loves reveling in how deep SC2 strategy is, and loves thinking their way to skill. 95% of the skill isn't figuring out deep thoughts about how many vikings you need to build to counter broodlords. It's playing for hours on end Viking v. Broodlord with your teammates. I could be wrong, for all I know Korean message boards are full of graduate level theses on bunker rushing and the like. I don't read Korean. But to use chess, a GM once teased amateurs about the "reading and nodding" method of chess improvement, when amateurs would find most improvement by dedicated practical drilling.
It's good that the OP brought up cheese. It's is actually a great example of an opportunity to improve the way TotalBiscuit was advocating. The cheese-hate has always baffled me. When I lose to cheese, I think, "Gosh, I wish I were better at defending against that cheese." It's this strange, cultural beast that developed and was reinforced artificially by this community. It's considered reasonable and legitimate to hate cheese and disdain cheesers, which is of course wrong. What's legitimate is cheese. It's a build, no more no less.
Cheese is an aggressive, early strategy designed to gain an early attacking advantage by sacrificing on economy and development. If it's "coin-tossy", then so be it, your overall skill edge is less than you had thought. Why is your opponent supposed to play to your advantages? If "the cheeser doesn't learn anything", so be it and stop pretending you actually care about your cheesing opponent's improvement path, and stop pretending that laddering needs to be some deep, educational experience. Again, chess players might see analogies to chess gambits. If you get rofl-stomped by gambits, complaining about the ignobility of gambiteers will earn you only deaf ears. You practice enough so you stop getting stomped by gambits. And just as no chess grandmaster is going to lose to your chess gambit, no SC2 grandmaster is going to lose to your so-called 'coin-toss' cheese.
So grab a friend or clan and cheese each other constantly for X days. Look forward to the next cheeser because you're going to slaughter him.
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EPT
