Lessons from OSL Kespa vs GOM competition - Page 9

On August 29 2012 01:48 Hiea wrote:
There is clear flaws in your arguement, saying that SC1 players are just overall better, sure, maybe Fantasy will be have 5 GSL titles by the end of 2013.

BUT, you can see how other A-teamers like Hyun, who while he switched midway and has become a high Code A / Low Code S, but he isn't at the top, same goes with Forgg, he won an MSL or OSL, and yet he have yet yielded major results, he made Code S, he defeated some foreigners at Assembly, IEM and the other tournament in Germany recently.

And you draw this out of 1 game with NesTea and Fantasy, while we can look at some other games from other pros, let's take MarineKing, he played awful and lost 2-0 to Trimaster, now does this mean that Trimaster has become a top Code S guy/MLG contender?

No, he went onto get crushed by other players straight afterwards.

And the majority of the Kespa players who did well in WCG are the fairly unknown, none of the really big names have yet to show their skill in SC2, sure Flash won today, and his looked good, but today was his first time where he went up against a SC2 player and won ( I didn't see the game).

And also about multitasking, you comparing NesTea? he was always known as a brilliant mind, but with poor mechanics in comparison to other pro-gamers, thats why he never achieved much success in SC1, and very much early on in SC2.

On August 29 2012 09:19 Cink wrote:

Just to play the contrarian I'd like to point out that flash burst onto a scene dominated by protoss players with a TvP build that became the staple of every terran's arsenal for quite some time. Since his rise to the top he has consistently created new successful builds of varying style. Yes the game was figured out to a certain degree, but even at the time of its last proleague breath there will still be new play in bw. In short, a balanced unchanged game and vast play styles are not mutually exclusive.

As far as the current transition is concerned, yes there is an established metagame that the KeSPA players have inherited. This does not mean they are not creating builds for this metagame. If by "builds" you are referring to common openings, that is just how a professional scene works, there will always be a standard solid opening 90% of players utilize at some point or another. Well-structured planned timing-attacks and unorthodox openings are generally created at a far more frequent rate than the standard opening in a match-up. Once a timing-attack has been figured out you need a new one, but that doesn't make your opening obsolete, just your follow-up/plan. The KeSPA players are having to forge their own way in the current metagame just as the eSF players are. Both are constantly devising new strategies that push the metagame forward. It's a continuous change, thus you can't really "ride the backs of people" for very long unless you want to always be one step behind.

In conclusion the S-class KeSPA players everyone is drooling over do not survive solely on their mechanics, which seems to be a common misconception among the portion of this community unfamiliar with them. They work closely with their teammates to create new strategies that will catch their opponents off guard, otherwise the game would become a stale mechanics fest, which I imagine would be met with a less than favorable fan-reception.

On August 29 2012 10:25 Shock710 wrote:

Hyun while on the a-team wasn't close to the top players and far from flash-bisu-jaedong tier, and Hyun doesn't practice as much as he use to on mbc forgg while he did win an OSL...that was ages ago like soo long ago that in the past 2-3 years I don't think he's even played in team league games once. Sun baby are not no names or small names they are BIG names everyone knows them from bw and how good they are u dot get called mini bisus for nothing and just before bw ended sun was tearing it up playing really damn good both of them always field in team games, I really disadvice going to liquidpedia only for ur information on bw pros...does not do them justice

On August 29 2012 10:30 Xiphos wrote:


Well not to nitpick but ForGG won a MSL and not the one that you've wrote.

ForGG's mechanics is atrocious though I must say. He won with an unexpected style of timing pushes while others were going standard. Then next season, he got completely mauled with the peers improving on their defenses.

But hey when he joined in KT, his big accomplishment was making Flash a 'god'. They trained with each other, and at the time of ForGG's enrollment in KT, Flash have begin to change up his turtle style into more midgame pushes that is ForGG's forte.

On August 29 2012 10:29 emythrel wrote:


I don't think I expressed myself well, I know that new builds and styles were being created. when i say they were "riding the backs of their predecessors" I mean that they didn't have to figure out what was good or bad while learning the game. They used the knowledge that was already gained by others to propel themselves to greater heights. Yes, thats what I was trying to say, makes more sense now I hope. LOL

I'm not saying they havent worked out their own builds or at least versions of a particular buildMy point was that when you are a seriously good player and are willing to put in the time you will be able to catch up very fast, because you can just look at what the best current players are doing and work towards that, which is what pretty much every other player in the world does (including 99.9% of TLers). Flash didn't just burst on to the scene, he practiced doing what was established as the standard, got as good as everyone else and then started to improve upon it. BW was always being refined more but always on the back of someone else's work. The mobile phone you carry couldn't have been created without all the other small steps in technology that came before it.

I am no pro gamer but whenever I go to a friends house and play xbox/ps3 I rip them apart despite the fact I do not own nor want to own a a console (apart from nintendo ones cause I love zelda and pokemon) and have generally not played the games they play very often. All I do is watch them for a while, get some tips on what I should be doing and then beat them hands down within an hour or two (that isn't a brag either, i've always been like that because I'm a very fast learner with good hand-eye from being a musician and have been gaming on a daily basis since I was about 8, games make sense to me more than to most people, though this isn't true amongst a community like TL, here i'm just a scrub) this is precisely what the BW players have done, just on a longer timescale.

They came in to a game that has an established way of doing things and used their expertise in BW to bridge the gap in game sense and knowledge that is currently there. If they had to come in to SC2 without any knowledge of how it SHOULD (or atleast how we SC2 old lags perceive it should) be done (i.e they had no VODS or replays to review) they certainly wouldn't walk in to WCS and take a series, it would take them atleast 1 year to be even close to a standard to compete with eSF players. When you come in to a game that has already been figured out to a fair degree, you can catch up very very fast and that is exactly what is happening.

What happens from here is anybody's guess. The kespa players are narrowing the gap and will at some point be on par with the very very best in SC2, some are already close. Some of them will eventually be better that eSF players, some won't, some will fail miserably. Basically what I'm trying to say is, once there is a level playing field (both eSF and kespa players being able to study equally for each other and kespa players having had the time to start experimenting properly with new things) then we can start to draw conclusions

On August 29 2012 08:17 emythrel wrote:
we can keep going on about this all we like, BW players caught up so fast blah blah... ofc they did. The original SC2 players had to do all the heavy lifting, figuring out what works and what doesn't, making refined builds, finding the right timings etc etc etc. When the BW players finally made the switch, all they had to do was take their superior mechanics and learn what the original SC2 players spent 2 years figuring out.

In the future, the kespa players will play their part shaping the metagame, creating builds and such but at the moment they are just riding the backs of the people who went before them, same as they did in BW. Flash is a god, no doubt but he came in to a game that was already figured out pretty well and then practiced until he was better at doing what everyone else was already doing. Its really like saying that modern footballers (soccer) would obviously beat footballers from the 1960's.. ofc they would.... there has been another 40 years of development in training and fitness techniques.

The BW players also have 2 years worth of VODs and replays to study of the top eSF players and the eSF p[layers have maybe 6-7 VODs to study of the kespa players. Thats not an even playing field. No one knows whether the kespa players will dominate or whether they will be equal or worse... a year down the line, then we will know. Until then all these threads are pretty much mute. Most people will be on one side or the other simply because they either are BW fanboi's or SC2 fanboi's..... Myself, I am a fanboi of epic matches and don't really care who comes out on top so long as I get to tag along for the ride.

The only reason I'm hoping kespa players don't start dominating is because I worry that kespa itself will take over the scene and kill any interest in the foreign scene and defo won't allow players from foreign teams to compete in its league or say let Team Liquid play in Proleague... worse of all they will probably take away licenses from players who leave a kespa team to play for an eSF team or a foreign team (because players will go where the money is, if EG offer good money to a kespa player who is on a low or non existant salary, some will take it). I'm hope i'm wrong but if kespa take over, the likelyhood is that the foreign scene will be demoted to little league status as it was in BW.

On August 29 2012 01:48 Hiea wrote:
...
BUT, you can see how other A-teamers like Hyun, who while he switched midway and has become a high Code A / Low Code S, but he isn't at the top, same goes with Forgg, he won an MSL or OSL, and yet he have yet yielded major results, he made Code S, he defeated some foreigners at Assembly, IEM and the other tournament in Germany recently.
...
And also about multitasking, you comparing NesTea? he was always known as a brilliant mind, but with poor mechanics in comparison to other pro-gamers, thats why he never achieved much success in SC1, and very much early on in SC2.

On August 29 2012 12:37 ggrrg wrote:


To be perfectly fair, Hyun was a mediocre A-teamer at best. His 43.3% winrate in bw is nothing remarkable...
Also, Forgg never won a MSL, only one OSL in 2008 (which, to be fair, he won in an incredible fashion). Still, his prime was long past when he switched to sc2. His final year in bw he wasn't fielded very often in SPL.

While your first claim about Nestea might be true, the second isn't. When he was picked up by KT, he was regarded as one of the most promising rookies, considering his domination in a multitude of amateur tourneys. For some reason, KT decided to use him primarily for 2v2, which took its toll on his 1v1 practice. One has to wonder how well Nestea would have done in bw if proleague didn't include 2v2 back then.

On August 29 2012 12:40 zyzq wrote:


Forgg did win an MSL and was fielded every time KT played in proleague.

On August 29 2012 10:27 dabom88 wrote:
Why they're only playing bo1 is the question on my mind.

On August 29 2012 10:10 zenkicker wrote:
Fantasy + Boxer = GG

On August 29 2012 12:40 zyzq wrote:


Forgg did win an MSL and was fielded every time KT played in proleague.