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On November 28 2012 18:25 Snowbear wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 08:16 The_Darkness wrote:
Did he address why he is practicing so little these days? As long as I remember, stephano tells us that "he doesn't practice a lot". He said the same during his prime days, when he took out koreans like it was the easiest thing to do. Now let's ask ourselves honestly the next question: is sc2 a game where you can compete with the top without a certain amount of practice? If stephano can, then he is the only genius in the world who can, and I'm not buying it.
I don't think SC2 is mechanically demanding enough that this is the case. There have been Koreans who openly practice less than average and yet can compete at very high levels (Genius, San and Life come to mind). I think you need to practice more than everyone to be the very best and stay there. That's why I believe the KeSPA players will eventually distinguish themselves from the rest (players like Bogus already have shown how their intense drive to practice constantly pays off). But for now I think its reasonable that Stephano doesn't practice much, he really hasnt been improving much lately, if at all.
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On November 28 2012 18:01 Pwnzer wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 10:37 Kyrao wrote:
I've never realized just how lazy Stephano seems to be... He doesn't want to do GSL because he doesn't want to put in the work of researching his opponents and there isn't enough money in it. I used to love this guy, now I'm just like, meh.
I honestly think he truly believes that he is just intellectually superior to everyone else and wants to go out of his way to show how lazy he is because he feels that it makes him seem more like a "natural." I'm not saying he's not, but it's sad how far he goes out of his way to make sure people see how little effort he puts into it. What a douche. Seriously. He'll never fully realize his potential, but whatever. I disagree with 99% of this post with the exception of the last line. I don't necessarily think the guy is lazy, I'm sure he practices just as much as everyone else despite what he actually SAYS because I don't think you can maintain the skill level that he has without having a decent amount of practice hours under your belt. As far as him feeling like he's intellectually superior...I think he's just a kid, with a ton of fame, and a ton of money that all just kinda happened in the last year or so. Those things are hard for any kid his age to handle without letting just a little bit of it go to your head. I don't blame him at all for having the brash attitude that he has, in fact I think it's kind of endearing...but that's just me. Haha. I DO however, agree that he will never reach his true potential. I kind of think he's a lot like Tracy McGrady from the NBA. (I know, I know people HATE the sports references) A lot of people thought T-Mac had the skill set and the athleticism to MJ, but he just wouldn't focus enough on his game, because he knew that a lot of his natural would just allow him to coast through and make his money. Of course injury had a lot to do with his career, but some of his injuries could have been afforded had he kept himself in better shape. I think Stephano has the potential to be one the greatest players sc2 has ever seen and I don't mean that as hyperbole, I really believe that, but he will never apply himself the way that it would take someone to become that great at it. This is all just my opinion of course, take it with a grain of salt. P.S. Sorry for the rambling...I'm bad at posting coherently.
100% agree with yours. There are a lot of examples in (other) sports where the more talented athletes are also the more lazy ones. It's natural/ logical. The biggest names are the rare talented/ not lazy ones I think. Who knows, maybe Stephano realizes one day that he can achieve more like for instance Agassi did at one point.
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On November 28 2012 08:56 darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 08:31 Emzeeshady wrote:On November 28 2012 07:51 zerious wrote:On November 28 2012 07:46 zhurai wrote:On November 28 2012 07:41 Zheryn wrote:
"There is absolutely no fun in playing Starcraft 2 anymore, the only thing that's fun is to win." Can't see Stephano being around that much longer. Probably won't see anything of Stephano in HotS. I don't think most pros have "fun" playing starcraft. they just want to and have to win. It's just a job for most pros, which makes it sad. Blizzard, oh how you have fucked up... A lot of Kespa players said SC2 was "more fun" then Starcraft Could you give a link or something to read about this?
Were in couple of random interviews. But it's kinda logical. You've been playing the same game (bw) for year after year. A little bit of fresh air (sc2) is of course more fun. But for how long will it stay fun?
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Quite a few prominent figures have vouched for Stephano's laziness though. Rotterdam is the most recent one that I roughly remembered. He mentioned that he was with Stephano for about a week or so (for NASL?) and he did not see Stephano practice at all. Yet, Stephano went to win a tournament just immediately after that. I think quite a few others have mentioned similar stories as well.
It's really not unheard of for someone to just cruise with their talent. As someone mentioned, Andre Agassi completely hated tennis and kinda just wing it until after his comeback. A lot of NBA players (seems) to do that as well. A recent football(soccer) example would be someone like Ronaldinho/Adriano. Great talents but were content with doing just enough and instead prefer to indulge in parties and women.
Of course we can't say for sure unless we talk to someone who really follow Stephano day to day. And we know that Stephano is quite vocal about how he does not really enjoy the game and is just in it for the money. So it makes sense that he only put the minimum effort required to get him the amount of money that he is satisfied with.
I think most of the skepticism is just because most people are offended ( rightly or wrongly) by his lack of passion for the game and some see his nonchalance/lack of effort as disrespectful towards those who do work hard. Or that some wonders how good he would be if he possess the drive and are upset that we might never find out.
Personally, i think it's Stephano's prerogative to do what he wants with his talentand I appreciate his honesty about his true goals and intentions.
Thanks for the interview Thorin(TeamAcer)
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It's too bad he won't practice more. He might have won that $100,000 prize in Shanghai. He almost acts like a pothead 7-11 clerk.
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On November 28 2012 18:28 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 18:25 Snowbear wrote:On November 28 2012 08:16 The_Darkness wrote:
Did he address why he is practicing so little these days? As long as I remember, stephano tells us that "he doesn't practice a lot". He said the same during his prime days, when he took out koreans like it was the easiest thing to do. Now let's ask ourselves honestly the next question: is sc2 a game where you can compete with the top without a certain amount of practice? If stephano can, then he is the only genius in the world who can, and I'm not buying it. I thought there were people who proved that stephano actually played more then he said? I might be wrong but I swear some people had proof or w/e that stephano played more then what he says. I agree with you I think he does play more then he says he does, although I do think the past week or 2 he might not have played to much because of all the traveling (I swear to god he's traveled like to 3 different countries in the past 2 weeks am I mistaken on that?)
The thing is that we don't actually know how much other pros really practice. I mean everybody knows that there are certain people like Kas, Happy and Sase who grind ladder for hours or for example Naniwa who has mentioned multiple times how much he atually practices. But what do we know about the average European Pro. I can't imagine medium tier pros practice that much. They make far too many mistakes for that. Look for example at the ultimate foreigner match between Sheth and ToD at Lonestar 2. These guys don't play 10 hours a day for sure and it shows.
Nerchio has said for example that he normally practices for about 2 hours a day normally but 10 hours before tournments. Darkforce said that Stephano practices more than most other European pros.
I mean it's a fact that Stephano has played a lot of games in the past to actually get as good as he is now. For example he started playing Ling Bling Muta in ZvT as everybody else when he started. He needed some time for sure to figure out his infestor based play. He has also participated in tons of online tournaments so he has a lot of games on his back for sure.
He also was in Korea for two times to grind out some games and if you think about Stephanos play little amouts of practice actually make sense. He has never really changed his style in ZvT nor ZvP with the exception of going from Roach Max to faster Infestor and 4th Base. His mechanics and apm where quite stunning at the time he entered the scene but now they are actually pretty average.
I watched his games vs Idra in WCS and his queen in the main was at 200 energy at 20 minutes without any harassment. His creep spread is also not that special anymore.
What made Stephano so successful was his ability to play ZERG right. Droning hard and going for a late game composition fast. He never really changed that and due to his strong defense and engegament capabilities people weren't able to abuse his style. He also had remarkable infestor control. Even today you see medium Zergs moving their infestors into the enemy army. Stephano was always about preserving his infestors.
There are tons of people who played zerg wrong in my opinion when Stephano was doing it completely right. Losira is a prime example. While Stephano went for a safe Deathball of Broodlord Infestor in ZvP Losira went for retarded Stuff like Baneling Drops and Ultralisks just to lose all his overlords.
Zergs stayed far too long on Mutalisks in ZvT as well. I even remember people asking Stephano to play Mutas on his stream and he said: "No. Mutas are weak in ZvT".
I feel it's just that Stephano did a lot of things right when playing SC2 but many of these things didn't actually require large amounts of practice. Now that he has become a role model for certain match-ups the little amount of practice actually hurts him more than anything as people find holes in his play and he is unable to move on and step up his play without investing time again.
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Im still waiting for the stephano-terran player who do very well despite not practicing.
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On November 28 2012 07:55 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 07:51 zerious wrote:On November 28 2012 07:46 zhurai wrote:On November 28 2012 07:41 Zheryn wrote:
"There is absolutely no fun in playing Starcraft 2 anymore, the only thing that's fun is to win." Can't see Stephano being around that much longer. Probably won't see anything of Stephano in HotS. I don't think most pros have "fun" playing starcraft. they just want to and have to win. It's just a job for most pros, which makes it sad. Blizzard, oh how you have fucked up... Blizzard is not at fault here, playing the same game, no matter how good it is, everyday for several hours on the same maps is boring as fuck. It's a job and jobs eventually get boring at some point.
Sc2 is just less fun than bw.
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I really like these long interviews because you can go deeper into the subject and you really get to know the players beyond the usual PR stuff.
I can understand that ppl can be annoyed by Steph but deep down I think he's just an honest guy who does his thing without caring too much about what others think about it. So far it has served him well.
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On November 28 2012 20:46 Hider wrote:
Im still waiting for the stephano-terran player who do very well despite not practicing.
This won't happen at all since Terran is the mechanically most demanding race and you already see pretty much every foreign Terran struggling hard despite good amounts of practice.
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On November 28 2012 20:55 wcr.4fun wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 07:55 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:On November 28 2012 07:51 zerious wrote:On November 28 2012 07:46 zhurai wrote:On November 28 2012 07:41 Zheryn wrote:
"There is absolutely no fun in playing Starcraft 2 anymore, the only thing that's fun is to win." Can't see Stephano being around that much longer. Probably won't see anything of Stephano in HotS. I don't think most pros have "fun" playing starcraft. they just want to and have to win. It's just a job for most pros, which makes it sad. Blizzard, oh how you have fucked up... Blizzard is not at fault here, playing the same game, no matter how good it is, everyday for several hours on the same maps is boring as fuck. It's a job and jobs eventually get boring at some point. Sc2 is just less fun than bw.
True but don't believe all the BW pros took pleasure at in-house practice after years. No matter how good the game is, they are pros with a schedule and everything, it's a job (hence the word "pro"), not entertainement. Many pros have already stated that, NaDa comes to mind.
I don't think Nadal and Djokovic take pleasure in every ball they hit. and on many occasions they would probably rather stay in bed or with their families than go work their asses off in conditionning and drills.
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On November 28 2012 18:45 Penev wrote:
I've never realized just how lazy Stephano seems to be... He doesn't want to do GSL because he doesn't want to put in the work of researching his opponents and there isn't enough money in it. I used to love this guy, now I'm just like, meh.
I honestly think he truly believes that he is just intellectually superior to everyone else and wants to go out of his way to show how lazy he is because he feels that it makes him seem more like a "natural." I'm not saying he's not, but it's sad how far he goes out of his way to make sure people see how little effort he puts into it. What a douche. Seriously. He'll never fully realize his potential, but whatever.
I think you completely miss the point. He isn't smarter than other players. He's certainly quite gifted but I don't think he's better than TLO/Nerchio/Ret/Scarlett if you look at pure SC2 skills. He just has that great mental strenght that is required in most sports and that allows him to be almost at 100% at every tournament he plays. Idra said it, and Stephano admitting it in an interview doesn't make him a douchebag.
As far as carrer choices go, it's up to him and I don't think we can judge him on that. Him saying GSL would be a bad carrer move because he doesn't feel he can get very far is rather a display of modesty.
Besides that, he DOES practice, just less than others. You can't be a top player by playing 10 games a week.
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Where is the honor...No respect for the game of the fans... Used to love him but hes a little bit too cocky and disrespectful. I wonder how EG feels about such statements when they pay him a good amount - A contract of close to six figures should have a minimum hours of practice per day required...
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On November 28 2012 14:34 OhThatDang wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 10:40 The_Darkness wrote:On November 28 2012 08:45 magnaflow wrote:On November 28 2012 08:22 The_Darkness wrote:On November 28 2012 07:46 AbideWithMe wrote:
Overall a good interview although there are some major weak points in my opinion:
1) Stephano gets harder and harder to understand. After 20 minutes he switches into some french english mumbling.
2) The interviewer asks like a thousand really specific and in my opinion uninteresting questions about foreigners but he fails to ask some critical questions with non-obvious answers.:
E.G: Stephano says he just plays for money and at the same time that he doesn't practice. Why and I'm asking that myself for months is nobody asking him:" WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU NOT PRACTICING IF YOU WANT TO WIN MONEY????"
On WCS Finals there was a 100 fucking K on the line. Why doesn't he practice to cash in on that. What is he doing if he's not practicing? He's a fulltime progamer. Why is he not practicing for fuckin sake?
3) To many questions about far too few topics. No questions whatsoever about:
1) How he's feeling with EG as a new team. Advantages/Disadvantages, atmosphere/mood, whether his recent decline in skill is related to the switch or not, the 12 year old abuse etc.
2) What's he planning on doing afterwards
3) Anything about the "Starcraft is dying" Story and what he thinks about LoL and Dota, etc.
4) his thoughts on HOTS obviously, balance and unit design choices etc.
How come there is no time to ask any of these questions in a 45 minute interview? I'm a pretty big fan of Stephano and I really want to know the answer to 2). His apparent lack of practice does not make any sense at all if he wants to win money. I've paid attention to the activity on his accounts and what he says about practice in his tweets and interviews and they're consistent with one another so it doesn't seem he's lying about not practicing, which means I guess he's incredibly lazy or somewhat irrational. As to 4), IIRC, he said HoTS was shit at some point because the units were imbalanced, which is a pretty silly criticism (although not inaccurate) given he was playing it when the beta was released. He did answer question #2. The game isn't fun. Would you do something for hours on end if you didn't like it? What don't you understand about the disconnect between wanting to make money and not practicing? He clearly is not maximizing his earnings. With just a modicum of effort he could earn more. Here are some recent results from Stephano (who until a couple months ago was probably the most consistently high performing SC2 player around), which well illustrate the fact that he needs to practice and that his lack of practice is hurting his bottom line: He was stomped 4-0 by Lucifron (stim to the win), lost a series against TT1 (in NASL and now he's not qualified for the playoffs) (in one of the games he had a lead, teched to blord infestor on metropolis and still lost -- I can't imagine a more humiliating loss), looked in general not like himself at DH and got 2-0'd by Fraer, lost 2-0 to Idra in a tournament with a ton of foreigners and Korean protoss in it (and 100000K on the line). If he didn't care about money then not practicing makes perhaps some sense because he doesn't care about anything. But he does care about money so he's either irrational or extremely lazy. Nearly no one likes work but you do it anyway. Also as an aside Stephano even when he practiced never practiced "hours on end". He would practice 3 hours usually. When he streamed he'd practice 4-5 hours and there was a one or two week period when he was in Korea where he was playing 8 hours a day. 3 hours a day is an extremely minimal commitment for anyone in any discipline I'm aware of (including esports) who effectively makes a living from that discipline (music, fighting, basketball, baseball, chess, etc.). The amount you stream doesnt equal the amount he puts into the game or plays off stream. He uses that no training or practicing facade to get into his opponents heads. He is just saying things but in reality he probably does put forth the effort and all to try to win games, sometimes you just get into a slump
What are you basing your conviction that he actually practices on? Because I've been following Stephano's career since the IPL qualifiers. I've watched his accounts; when he says he's not pracitcing, he's not practicing. No one has ever identified a smurf account that could be his. In the EU it's easy to spot since it would presumably have a very high win rate. One or two were suggested (Tentaculat) but replays were found and the hotkey set up was different so it wasn't him. It's possible he's just playing loads of custom games against other pros on a smurf account and those pros are refusing to divulge that fact that he's secretly toiling non-stop, but that's preposterous.
Bling has confirmed that he doesn't practice and so has Rotterdam (when they've been around him). Even when Stephano goes to Korea supposedly to train, there are usually one or two days where he plays a lot and then a bunch of days where he doesn't play at all or only plays 5 or so games. Until about three or so months ago, he was practicing somewhat regularly; now the only time he plays is in tournaments and his play lately as I describe above is to put it mildly not inspirational for someone who was a top 3 zerg.
I'm really surprised EG didn't require Stephano to stream regularly since their sponsors' names are on the overlays. I honestly don't know how they make any money from Stephano; he doesn't even robotically repeat the sponsors' names like the rest of EG does and now he's, for the first time, actually starting to play badly and not make it into tournaments (NASL, e.g.). Perhaps having a big salary has sapped him of some of his motivation to train.
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On November 28 2012 21:20 ChApFoU wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 18:45 Penev wrote:
I've never realized just how lazy Stephano seems to be... He doesn't want to do GSL because he doesn't want to put in the work of researching his opponents and there isn't enough money in it. I used to love this guy, now I'm just like, meh.
I honestly think he truly believes that he is just intellectually superior to everyone else and wants to go out of his way to show how lazy he is because he feels that it makes him seem more like a "natural." I'm not saying he's not, but it's sad how far he goes out of his way to make sure people see how little effort he puts into it. What a douche. Seriously. He'll never fully realize his potential, but whatever. I think you completely miss the point. He isn't smarter than other players. He's certainly quite gifted but I don't think he's better than TLO/Nerchio/Ret/Scarlett if you look at pure SC2 skills. He just has that great mental strenght that is required in most sports and that allows him to be almost at 100% at every tournament he plays. Idra said it, and Stephano admitting it in an interview doesn't make him a douchebag. As far as carrer choices go, it's up to him and I don't think we can judge him on that. Him saying GSL would be a bad carrer move because he doesn't feel he can get very far is rather a display of modesty. Besides that, he DOES practice, just less than others. You can't be a top player by playing 10 games a week.
Umm, he actually probably is smarter than the other players which is why he has massively better results than they do and he has influenced the metagame more than any other foreign, or Korean, zerg. His multitasking, micro and sense of when and where to engage has always been better than pretty much every Zerg, especially TLO and Ret -- that's not even close. His truly exceptional focus, multitasking, map awareness, etc. is why he has gone on legendary ladder runs and even wrecked face when he went to Korea and played on ladder, which no foreigner has come close to doing, especially right away.
Scarlett is very talented and so is Nerchio but Nerchio has always been a notch below Stephano in most aspects of Zerg, and Scarlett needs to play a lot more games against top flight competition before she can even be considered to be in Stephano's league (although the talent is there). At this point Nerchio has probably surpassed him and the top Korean zergs (Life, Leenock and Hyun), I have to say, are playing way, way better than he is, in just about every way imaginable, which until recently was not at all the case. Stephano's effectively been on a three month vacation from Starcraft. If he finds his motivation to practice again he'll be a top 5 zerg; if he trains seriously, he could be the best in the world. If he continues down his current path, the best that he can hope for is that he'll continue to be a top tier foreigner.
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On November 28 2012 21:25 Snake.69 wrote:
Where is the honor...No respect for the game of the fans... Used to love him but hes a little bit too cocky and disrespectful. I wonder how EG feels about such statements when they pay him a good amount - A contract of close to six figures should have a minimum hours of practice per day required...
He was always like that. How could you love him then?
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This guy is the most honest and humble person in esports ever.
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On November 28 2012 21:20 ChApFoU wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2012 18:45 Penev wrote:
I've never realized just how lazy Stephano seems to be... He doesn't want to do GSL because he doesn't want to put in the work of researching his opponents and there isn't enough money in it. I used to love this guy, now I'm just like, meh.
I honestly think he truly believes that he is just intellectually superior to everyone else and wants to go out of his way to show how lazy he is because he feels that it makes him seem more like a "natural." I'm not saying he's not, but it's sad how far he goes out of his way to make sure people see how little effort he puts into it. What a douche. Seriously. He'll never fully realize his potential, but whatever. I think you completely miss the point. He isn't smarter than other players. He's certainly quite gifted but I don't think he's better than TLO/Nerchio/Ret/Scarlett if you look at pure SC2 skills. He just has that great mental strenght that is required in most sports and that allows him to be almost at 100% at every tournament he plays. Idra said it, and Stephano admitting it in an interview doesn't make him a douchebag. As far as carrer choices go, it's up to him and I don't think we can judge him on that. Him saying GSL would be a bad carrer move because he doesn't feel he can get very far is rather a display of modesty. Besides that, he DOES practice, just less than others. You can't be a top player by playing 10 games a week.
in terms of pure SC2 skills, he is way better than TLO, a rank above Ret, I don't know much about Scarlett and Nerchio just has his own aggressive style so it's harder to judge there.
TLO is innovative but it often doesn't work out especially against koreans because korean players who play standard are able to deal with weird unexpected builds.
Ret's late game control is pretty poor and often plays too greedy imo.
Nerchio's aggressive style falls against korean good terrans because it's not easy to play aggressive his way if he doesn't trade efficiently
And besides, Stephano is kinda the first one to refine a build that deals well with most of the toss timings after FFE.
No one ever come close to stephano's minimap awareness, his game 1 in dreamhack against STC has shown us how amazing his mini map awareness is, never missed a single drop.
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On November 28 2012 07:46 AbideWithMe wrote:
Overall a good interview although there are some major weak points in my opinion:
1) Stephano gets harder and harder to understand. After 20 minutes he switches into some french english mumbling.
2) The interviewer asks like a thousand really specific and in my opinion uninteresting questions about foreigners but he fails to ask some critical questions with non-obvious answers.:
E.G: Stephano says he just plays for money and at the same time that he doesn't practice. Why and I'm asking that myself for months is nobody asking him:" WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU NOT PRACTICING IF YOU WANT TO WIN MONEY????"
On WCS Finals there was a 100 fucking K on the line. Why doesn't he practice to cash in on that. What is he doing if he's not practicing? He's a fulltime progamer. Why is he not practicing for fuckin sake?
3) To many questions about far too few topics. No questions whatsoever about:
1) How he's feeling with EG as a new team. Advantages/Disadvantages, atmosphere/mood, whether his recent decline in skill is related to the switch or not, the 12 year old abuse etc.
2) What's he planning on doing afterwards
3) Anything about the "Starcraft is dying" Story and what he thinks about LoL and Dota, etc.
4) his thoughts on HOTS obviously, balance and unit design choices etc.
How come there is no time to ask any of these questions in a 45 minute interview?
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EG just pissed away couple thousand dollars. Stephano will retire in a year from now . watch and see.
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EPT
