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well, in response to plansix' argument: lets have a look at bw in iccup in say 2008-2010. is there anybody who disagrees with the statement that terran was harder to play at low skill levels than toss or zerg in bw? is there anybody who refutes the statement that a terran who just got promoted to C rank has almost necessarily more mechanical skill (defined as the degree of perfection he achieves in all mechanical aspects of the game) than a toss who just got C?
the main difference is that, back in bw, no one blamed the game itself for this "issue". it was accepted.
imho the lack of successful foreign terrans has two underlying factors.
the first is what was already stated many times in this thread: the terran race scales better off apm, multitasking, micro and stuff like that than other races, but requires a higher degree of perfection with respect to these things to be effective. zerg, for example, is more taxing in the resource management and tactical area. but since mechanics require a more rigid practice regiment than strategical prowess, the skill-gap between foreigners and koreans tends to be larger for mechanics than for tactical thinking. thus, zerg and toss are more favorable to foreigners than terran, in comparison to koreans.
the second reason is randomness in the race choice. the amount of foreigners is large, yes. but the pool of foreigners who got the talent, the will and the practice environment (and rigidity) to have even the slightest potential of keeping up with koreans is very small. there are maybe 12-15 foreigners who belong to this pool. with such a small sample size of foreigners that are relevant to this discussion, it could very well be pure coincidence that there are almost no terrans among them. at the same time, the image of korean terrans as super-strong mainly stems from the success of a select few players like innovation and mvp. whose race choice could be explained by other factors than simply "terran UP at plat, OP at gsl, duh".
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Terran is the most difficult race to play, so it is considerably harder for foreigners to keep up if they play Terran. That's it.
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Guys, let's not tip-toe around this topic and find silly reasons to "why there aren't any foreign Terrans in tournaments, but Zerg and protoss are.
We all know and seen that Terran is by far the hardest race mechanic wise as well as skill wise. If you are the "perfect player" and play Terran to it's optimal, you may win ALL the greatest tournaments. As we've seen a few times: Innovation, Polt, IMMvp, TaeJa etc.
Therefore the game design has made Terran this way. Either show full potential of Terran or just not make it at all. This does not apply to Zerg and Protoss. These two races could have there moments that are easier to control, therefore foreigners have easier time defeating koreans.
I have a few recent event examples of this: Naniwa defeating Innovation. ShowTime defeating IMMvp. Stephano/Ret and many other European players defeating some korean favorites as well as Korean Terran favorites.
But I'd like for some of you to name a foreign Terran who easily or even hardly, rather, defeating koreans.
Btw, I have this theory about why Protoss does so bad at tournaments even though they are by far balanced if not even stronger than the two other races. From early 2010, there have been SOOOOO many different Protoss/Zerg players falling out/coming into the scene, so many variations and different players from both Korea and foreigners.
This reason, that there are many different Protoss/Zerg players than there are Terran players coming into the scene, gives me the idea that most of them are way too nervious, or inexperienced in bigger tournaments, and couldn't show the full potential of their represented race.
For Terrans on the other hand, it's the other way around. We have seen the same Terrans we ALWAYS see in playoffs and quarter finals/grand finals. But we NEVER see new Terrans coming into the scene and choke like all these new Protoss/Zerg players do against players like Mvp, Polt, Innovation etc.
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good foreign terrans with mechanics exist. their names are chris pedro and juanito.
short list 
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On September 11 2013 22:41 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2013 15:03 Whatson wrote:
Well then plansix, why do you think there are so few successful foreigner Terrans? ...you're not seriously trying to pull off that argument are you? Because its the same argument that Terrans dismiss out of hand when everyone else brings up how riotously successful Korean Terrans tend to be. Anyone who points out that Terran has more GSL medals than Protoss and Zerg put together gets "they were just better " (although certain patch changes indicated otherwise). Therefore there being so few successful foreigner Terrans is nothing to do with balance its just they're not as good. Its worth noting that in HotS Terran has more Premier tournament wins in HotS than Protoss and Zerg put together, incidentally. Source: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_TournamentsYou can't have it both ways so pick one. That is a HELL of a necro though.
And if you look at top 2 finishes it evens out quite well. Yeah in HotS terran got a bit of the better end in those finals, but aside from that statistics are fine. But if you look at the list of foreign players, that took games and series of top korean players, you´ll see that the lists for zerg and protoss are surprisingly much longer than for terran. how does this come?
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On September 11 2013 23:08 Gamegene wrote:good foreign terrans with mechanics exist. their names are chris pedro and juanito. short list
Happy is the only foreigner with really good mechanichs imho. Probably will be the next hypetrain to get de-railed tho.
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On September 11 2013 15:38 cloneThorN wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Dunno why. Maybe it is because most terran players decide to go for unit combositions, that requires more skill than they have? That would be my first thought, and that is kinda supported by the first few months of HotS.
In the era of imbabat drops, there where change in the ammount of good foreing terrans. Instead, the already good got an unfair advantage, that they abused for a few months.
Now, most terran players nowadays go mmmw (marine maraduer medivavc widowmine), which is a very cheap but fragile unit combosition, until you get enough marauders and medivacs out.
This unit combo, mmmw, emphazises mobility, while granting strong defensive options, and zoning(the ability to cut off portions of the map from the other player, aka a siege).
This requirethe user to have a few qualities, in order to play for maximum effect:
- Speed (APM)
- Attention. The ability to not tunnelvision(something like 95% of the entire gaming community suffers from tunnelvision, because they want to look at the pretty things on the screen. Zero tunnelvision means that you don't give a flying f!ck about how the units or graphics look, as long as they are simple to read).
- Knowleagde of enemies timings and counters to your playstyle
- Ability to confuse your enemy(mindgames)
___________________
TL;DR
If you go for the mmmw combosition, and is not already in masters league, then you are making it hard on yourself, and the rate at which you progress in skill will be alot slower, as you will have too many things to focus on at once.
I suggest starting with mech, or do a bunch of maraduer/hellion all ins.
... I know a lot of people will scorn me for suggesting these things, however doing maraduer/hellion all ins will force them to have good macro, atleast for the first 10 min, while alson teaching them about timings, harass, unit weakness/strenght.
While doing standard macro will force you to learn about all these things on an advanced level, the level where you have to actually read and calculate what your opponent can do/will do, which is not feasible under masters, if you want to not screw your own shizzle up meanwhile.
LAST TL;DR
Don't focus on macro oriented playstyles before you reach masters. It's a waste of your time, as it require a lot of skills before you can actually benefit from it.
I still think this post of mine explain it best.
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On September 11 2013 23:08 Gamegene wrote:good foreign terrans with mechanics exist. their names are chris pedro and juanito. short list
Lucifron*, Happy*, Kas, Thorzain (Kas and Thorzain not as hot atm though). There you have it, the foreign Terrans who are worth mentioning when talking about top foreigners. Hope to see more in the future though.
* The ones who are super legit atm
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This is a fun thread to read; lot's of interesting theories :D
What I find most interesting is this is the first season since... I started keeping track of any statistics (probably a year and a half) that I've had more than 20-25% Terran opponents (It's actually very close 30-35% on both EU and NA).
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On September 11 2013 15:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2013 15:03 Whatson wrote:
Well then plansix, why do you think there are so few successful foreigner Terrans? Correlation =/= causation lack of top foreign terrans not mean terrans are harder to play for the same reason my never having seen africa with my own two eyes doesn't mean that africa does not really exist.
Exactly. There is no single specific reason that can be applied to the entire world that will prove why there are less foreign terrans. There is only one really high level protoss in Australia from what we learned on the last Meta. That does not mean that Australians have some disadvantage in the protoss department.
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On September 12 2013 00:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2013 15:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 11 2013 15:03 Whatson wrote:
Well then plansix, why do you think there are so few successful foreigner Terrans? Correlation =/= causation lack of top foreign terrans not mean terrans are harder to play for the same reason my never having seen africa with my own two eyes doesn't mean that africa does not really exist. Exactly. There is no single specific reason that can be applied to the entire world that will prove why there are less foreign terrans. There is only one really high level protoss in Australia from what we learned on the last Meta. That does not mean that Australians have some disadvantage in the protoss department.
And here in Denmark, we have one of each:
Babyknight, Bunny and Sonder
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On September 12 2013 00:05 cloneThorN wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2013 00:00 Plansix wrote:On September 11 2013 15:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 11 2013 15:03 Whatson wrote:
Well then plansix, why do you think there are so few successful foreigner Terrans? Correlation =/= causation lack of top foreign terrans not mean terrans are harder to play for the same reason my never having seen africa with my own two eyes doesn't mean that africa does not really exist. Exactly. There is no single specific reason that can be applied to the entire world that will prove why there are less foreign terrans. There is only one really high level protoss in Australia from what we learned on the last Meta. That does not mean that Australians have some disadvantage in the protoss department. And here in Denmark, we have one of each: Babyknight, Bunny and Sonder
And Australia is full of Zergs and a couple terrans. There is no real reason for it, it is just the way it is. It is really unlikely that all three races are going to get a 33/33/33 split across the board in the professional scene, since there are so many reasons to pick a race.
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On September 12 2013 00:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2013 15:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 11 2013 15:03 Whatson wrote:
Well then plansix, why do you think there are so few successful foreigner Terrans? Correlation =/= causation lack of top foreign terrans not mean terrans are harder to play for the same reason my never having seen africa with my own two eyes doesn't mean that africa does not really exist. Exactly. There is no single specific reason that can be applied to the entire world that will prove why there are less foreign terrans. There is only one really high level protoss in Australia from what we learned on the last Meta. That does not mean that Australians have some disadvantage in the protoss department.
Completely right. The race choosing process alone is way to difficult to analyze. Like, there are probably a lot of people who played Terran (in BW and later in SC2) because of Boxer. Then there are probably people out there that just like races for their design/lore/visual appearence. Then there are influences like WoL having a long Terran, a short Protoss and no Zerg campaign, which for players that started playing Starcraft via Singleplayer means that they have a headstart with T/P because they at least know techtrees/units a little bit. (similar thing in HotS for Zerg)
Then there are (pro-)players that picked a certain race because it was appealing to them from the background they were coming from (e.g. Stephano picking Zerg because he thought it was closest to WC3 human)
In the end you'd have to analyze race picking/switching trends over time to get a good overview of reasons why people pick what race.
I picked zerg because it was swarmy and because my second choice (terran) was too generic for me (=Terran is very similar to CnC/Dune/SupCom/AoE races)
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On September 11 2013 22:52 OneSpeed wrote:
But I'd like for some of you to name a foreign Terran who easily or even hardly, rather, defeating koreans.
Major over Alicia, Sjow over Life, Theognis over Jaedong, Lucifron over Mvp, Lucifron over Hero. Dayshi probably did it somewhere around 5-10 times in last ATC.
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Terran is the hardest race due to mechanical requirements and thus there are very few foreigners who can compete with it at the top level. If you just play all 3 races it's pretty clear T is the most difficult, shitloads of people have come to this conclusion without even watching or knowing about the professional scene. And idk why people are even discussing the Australian scene, Moonglade is really the only "top level" player there.
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On September 12 2013 00:24 SupLilSon wrote:
Terran is the hardest race due to mechanical requirements and thus there are very few foreigners who can compete with it at the top level. If you just play all 3 races it's pretty clear T is the most difficult, shitloads of people have come to this conclusion without even watching or knowing about the professional scene. And idk why people are even discussing the Australian scene, Moonglade is really the only "top level" player there.
A shit load of Terrans have said that it is true and then reinforced that by saying it over and over. Confirmation bias does not make something fact. Just because you get a lot of people saying something does not make it true, as history has proven. And people are discussing the Australian scene because it was on the last episode of META with Artotsis and it was a topic.
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Even outside of proscene an only based on ladder:
There is trend since beggining of sc2 where Terran population is low league heavy, Zerg opposite and Protoss in the middle.
For me there are 2 possible reasons of that
- either worse players in general chose to play Terran or it's harder to be successful as Terran (or combination of both)
Take your pick.
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On September 12 2013 00:33 keglu wrote:
Even outside of proscene an only based on ladder:
There is trend since beggining of sc2 where Terran population is low league heavy, Zerg opposite and Protoss in the middle.
For me there are 2 possible reasons of that
- either worse players in general chose to play Terran or it's harder to be successful as Terran (or combination of both)
Take your pick.
Or people like space aliens, warping in units or think that zerg looks dope. People play elves all the time in D&D and WoW had more Alliance than Horde until they added Blood Elves to horde. That doesn't mean elves are OP in both table top RPGs and WoW. It just means people like elves.
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When was the last time we saw some terran personalitys outside korea. I personally switched from terran to protoss when watching white-ra's games. But since TLO switched to zerg, drewbie stopped competing, jinro retired and select took that break there just arn't any terran personalitys. Compare that to White-ra, Incontrol, MC, Naniwa, Huk, grubby, Stephano, Idra, scarlett, nerchio, catz and snute.
Looking at active terrans; thorzain, lucifron, sjow, kas, major, bratok, demuslim, happy, goody, naama, illusion, qxc etc etc. We rarely ever see their personalitys unless we go looking for them.
Whether or not zerg or protoss players are performing well there is a strong personality base that attracts people to the various races. People that you see on the "talk shows" on the "community posts" in the tournaments are always the zergs and protoss.
So the people i hear about, the people i know, the commentators, the hosts, the fan favourites are all zerg and protoss players. All the players i'm intrested in dont play terran, why would i want to play terran?
(I miss jinro he was always my favourite terran  )
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On September 12 2013 00:37 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2013 00:33 keglu wrote:
Even outside of proscene an only based on ladder:
There is trend since beggining of sc2 where Terran population is low league heavy, Zerg opposite and Protoss in the middle.
For me there are 2 possible reasons of that
- either worse players in general chose to play Terran or it's harder to be successful as Terran (or combination of both)
Take your pick. Or people like space aliens, warping in units or think that zerg looks dope. People play elves all the time in D&D and WoW had more Alliance than Horde until they added Blood Elves to horde. That doesn't mean elves are OP in both table top RPGs and WoW. It just means people like elves.
Sorry but this is not about amount of players playing race but how sucessfull is average player of particular race
Whole WoL there were more Terran players than Zerg players btw.
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EPT
