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I'm seeing a lot of comments from people who are disappointed that we did not share the exact plans for WCS 2014. To clarify, we did not intend for this to be an announcement, or an announcement of an announcement for that matter  The reality is that we are still finalizing the details of WCS 2014 with our partners, however, we did not want to wait until everything was finalized before letting you know some of the things we were discussing. We want to give the community an opportunity to provide feedback before we locked down the specific details. We have outlined most of our plans and ideas in some of our answers, but haven't fully committed to any of the decisions because we want to hear from the community. Our goal is to confirm and announce the plans for WCS 2014 before BlizzCon. That gives you at least a week to give us your input on what we've shared! Thanks again for your support! -kimaphan |
United States43 Posts
On October 15 2013 14:48 Yakikorosu wrote:
It would be helpful if Blizzard could share more details about their reasoning behind going from 4 to 3 seasons and eliminating Season Finals. I understand that theoretically it's "to free up room for more non-WCS events," but has this decision been taken with some sort of confirmation that there WILL BE more non-WCS events than there were this year, or is that just an assumption Blizzard is making? More DreamHacks and IEMs are great but will there be GSLs/OSLs outside of WCS KR? If we're only having three GSLs/OSLs combined the entire year in 2014, that's pretty sad... Even this four this year didn't feel like very many, and that was with three Season Finals acting as additional "mini-tournaments."
I mentioned this in another reply, but another significant reason for having three seasons next year is to allow us to spread out the schedule of a particular season to make the format more linear and simpler. We received feedback this year that each season felt too crammed. The qualifiers and challenger league of following season were taking place during the same time as the premier league of the current season. This was confusing to many of our viewers.
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On October 15 2013 17:33 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing. I agree, the barcode men are not really helping the fans. The ladder seasons would become an online tournament in its own right with WCS points. I like!
100 pts for finishing as first in a ladder season end.
50 for second.
25 for third/fourth.
10 for 5/8th.
Only on the region you are signed up for.
This would be cool.
Top 16 not in a league gets invited to challenger or seeded in the qualifier or something.
Edit: changes to how you get into GM or drop out are needed.
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I know you all at Blizzard haven't yet decided how to handle region-locking quite yet, but would there be set slots for non-regional players to compete in other regions, especially if residing in that particular region they want to compete in is not viable?
They would still have to fulfill the requirement to maintain a presence on the ladder of their WCS region of choice. This is more aimed for players who do not have a native region to play in for WCS such as Australian players and SEA-based players such as Sen, PiG, Moonglade, etc.. Because a region-lock requiring residency would hurt those players the most.
Also for the lack of or the restructuring of season finals, I was wondering if you considered instead of Top 16 go to Blizzcon or the WCS Grand Finals, it could be Top 32 players?
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On October 15 2013 17:32 mikkmagro wrote:
Good stuff
Need more like this. Please give your best constructive criticism while you have the chance!
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United States43 Posts
On October 15 2013 15:17 ASasquatch wrote:
Personally as a player I think these seem like really good steps to improving WCS, especially adding some light form of region lock (personally I think residency is best) and having each respective regions ladder feeding into WCS in some form to help make each ladder competitive. Thanks for being so transparent Kim!
Thanks for the feedback, Gage! Keep 'em coming
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On October 15 2013 17:36 Wintex wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 17:33 BaneRiders wrote:On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing. I agree, the barcode men are not really helping the fans. The ladder seasons would become an online tournament in its own right with WCS points. I like! 100 pts for finishing as first in a ladder season end. 50 for second. 25 for third/fourth. 10 for 5/8th. Only on the region you are signed up for. This would be cool. Top 16 not in a league gets invited to challenger or seeded in the qualifier or something. Edit: changes to how you get into GM or drop out are needed.
It would be cool but i see serious problems with that:
- Potential cheating?
- Stream sniping could be a problem
- What about game fixing? I remember Demuslim playing (and loosing) Byun like 15 times in a row, how do you make sure that team mates or friends don't just snipe each other all night. Its not their fault that they get matched up constantly.
- It could kill non wcs online Tournaments. Things like an all killing night in the ATC could take an entire evening and they aren't giving any points.
Its cool but i think in the current ladder system its not makeable.
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On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing.
Is residence really that important? I mean if it's just about practicing on the server of the region they plan to compete in, then how about a requirement that a majority of the games (ladder and custom) played by the competitor should happen on the server of WCS region he/she wants to participate in.
Anyways, I have mixed feelings about WCS working together with Red Bull Battlegrounds. Maybe I am mixing it up with another Red Bull event, but wasn't the Battlegrounds almost invite only? edit: What I am trying to say is, that I hope blizzard pushes the tournament organizers it works together with into providing the vast majority of the spots to open (maybe regional) qualifiers and only seeds players based on the performance of the past tournament.
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4713 Posts
While some people are reading into this and seeing only 3 WCS seasons per year as being a negative thing, I consider it a blessing.
The scene needs some breathing room to be able to foster up and coming talent and, atm there is not time when you could schedule said tournaments because WCS is almost always on.
And if I'm reading this correctly, having a limited number of slots in premier league for people outside its region, could be one of the best and most balanced ways to solve the issue regarding Koreans swooping in and taking up all the slots.
Of course there still need to be some small local tournaments that are completely region locked, and now with only 3 WCS per year we can have that as well.
I'm hoping there is enough time that GOM and OGN can also host an independent GSL and OSL of their own and thus bring more money into the Korean region then the 4 we'll have this year and the proposed 3 next year.
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Was getting kind of frustrated until i got to "We have decided that the season finals will not be continuing in their current form and we’re looking to change how they work in 2014." Thank you! This makes me happy
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thank you blizz for reaching out with some additional info. Really appreciate the insight, and hope that 2014 can be bigger, better, and more efficient than 2013.
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i really hope they get rid of the points for WCS from random 'premier' events. they said a primary goal for WCS is to reward the best players, but all that the current system did was reward the teams with the most money. i dont really think people watch IEM or Dreamhack for the WCS points, they watch because its good starcraft in its own right, and although you could point to this week nani story line, if blizzard did a better job of hyping 'the road to blizzcon' all year long, people wouldnt be as focused on naniwa. naniwa handed WCS a get out of jail card by doing more to hype blizzcon in a weekend than they have done in months.
maybe if they were desperate to have a reward from other events, they could allow mlg/dreamhack/iem to have 1 wildcard spot in to blizzcon each, but as it stands now the whole table of points is dominated by people who actually didnt do that great in WCS.
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On October 15 2013 17:45 Fjodorov wrote:
Was getting kind of frustrated until i got to "We have decided that the season finals will not be continuing in their current form and we’re looking to change how they work in 2014." Thank you! This makes me happy
What if they take the money for the Season finals and dedicate it to making more of the tournament played live in front of an audience (which means higher estimated costs for hotel reimbursements)? That would be awesome!
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On October 15 2013 17:45 JustPassingBy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing. Is residence really that important? I mean if it's just about practicing on the server of the region they plan to compete in, then how about a requirement that a majority of the games (ladder and custom) played by the competitor should happen on the server of WCS region he/she wants to participate in. Anyways, I have mixed feelings about WCS working together with Red Bull Battlegrounds. Maybe I am mixing it up with another Red Bull event, but wasn't the Battlegrounds almost invite only?
Yeah I would like to hear what blizzard intends to do about this situation with tournaments giving out wcs points but not being transparent in how they invite players. IEM NY is a good example of how bad it can be. Its very important that the system is fair and the only way I see that being possible is having qualifiers. Invites to tournaments that give out wcs points need to stop. Except for maybe "reigning champion invite".
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Dear Miss Phan,
After lurking for years, I've finally decided to register here on TeamLiquid in order to be able to talk to you.
(By the by, hi TeamLiquid! You guys rock!)
---Wall of text incoming, sorry about that!---tl,dr at the end---
First of all, I'd like to thank you for posting to the community. I think this is a fantastic step forward for Blizzard and Starcraft II. Just like David Kim and Dustin Browder were particularly active in posting balance updates during the Heart Of The Swarm beta (and have remained very communicative since), I'd love to hear from you often in this period in which significant E-Sports changes will take place (an E-Sports balance patch, if you like!). It takes guts, I'm sure, to reach out to a passionate community that doesn't necessarily agree with what you do, and is a very harsh critic of your work. So, kudos!
I'd also like to say, before I comment on your interview, that I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the 2013 WCS. It has absolutely increased the time I spend watching, discussing and thinking about Starcraft -> and even playing! Having a premier, consistant league-like tournament (as opposed to weekend sprints) in my continent (Europe), happening live at a time that's convenient for me to watch, well, has been nothing short of amazing.
Now, then, to the actual points being discussed here. I'll try to propose concrete, implementable and realistic ways to improve onto WCS. I'll try to illustrate with examples from Europe, as it's the league I follow the most.
-Regarding Region Lock: From an expectating point of view, I love having Koreans in Europe! It's brought me great entertainment to be able to watch my biggest E-Sport hero live (Mvp!). Seeing MC be himself, being awed as duckdeok finally makes a name for himself and just cracks under the importance of the moment, and watching Nerchio proclaim "MMA is back!" have all been highlights of my year.
From a "growing the scene" perspective, I can only imagine having high-quality practice on ladder and live is great for all scenes. Bringing great players from Korea into America and Europe has the effect of bolstering growth.
However, as you say, one of the major points in getting a high viewership is being able to identify with players that reperesent you and your country. I think we all saw, in WCS 2012, that national rivalry in Europe is a strong driver of vierwerships. Keeping some Europeans in WCS Europe definately bolsters that. Plus, it creates a feeling that "I could try to get there", an encouragement that has been needed, particularly in the American scene, I feel.
I'd propose a very soft lock to be able to have our cake, and eat it, too: If possible, moving the Ro32 offline + adding the following requirement: You must be a Grand Master in the European Ladder (either as of "Day X", or during the full run at several times) in order to qualify for the European Premier league (same for other regions, of course). This guarantees non-europeans actually play in the Europe ladder if they want to compete in Europe, "sharing" their strategies. This drives skill up everywhere and avoids someone playing 30 games in a continent and going back home which a trophy, which feels bad. Additionally, this system makes ladder very relevant. If the current Grand Master league is too big/too small, adjust it's size (I mean, it doesn't actually serve any purpose now, so changing it shouldn't actually "break anything").
Drawing a fixed percentage of players in the Challenger league from players that LIVE in the continent sounds like a good idea too. Please don't make it dependent on being born somewhere. If someone like ForGG/Stardust decides to live in France for years, going away from family and friends in order to compete in Europe, he should be able to opt for one of the reserved seeds.
-Regarding no Region Finals and only 3 Seasons: I actually liked the Region Finals as a tournament. They were very good games by the players most in form at the time. Plus, they allow for some "competition amongst regions", which is excellent in my book. However, I do agree that they do diminish the importance of the regional narratives. Regional tournaments are long and take extensive preparation. Maru overcame all odds to win on WCS Korea, beating Symbol, Innovation and Rain in an impressive tour of force, to then... fall flat in Europe.
It feels like weekend bashes a la Dreamhack, IEM, MLG, Red Bull Battlegrounds etc can fulfill the niche of "comparing regions" quite capably, but don't invalidate WCS runs as much, so I like the combination of no season finals with more room for external (non-WCS) tournaments.
-Regarding seeding from one year to the next: I believe Nony made a good point in this thread before: The fact that the last season of this year seeds it's top 8 into the next competition next year feels bad. To put it plainly, why is Mvp's fantastic performance on the first half of the year less relevant than MC's on the second half? Does it really feel correct to seed Targa and Genius, but not ForGG or TLO, who have been more consistant? (No disrespect meant to anyone, I'm using names strictly for their point totals/league placements!).
My take would be the following: Every new year wipes all points out. The top 16 in points go to BlizzCon. The seeding for the first WCS lueagues next year is simply the 8 highest point totals in that region (or however many your decide to seed). That takes the whole year into account and adds extra drama to the last tournaments on the year, as maybe someone like, say Lucifron, or Happy, who have been consistently good, and are on the outside looking in on the Europe-based point scale, to try and go to EVERY tournament now in order to get a seed, just like Naniwa just did with IEM in order to try and go to Blizzcon!
I understand you may not be able to implement this -this year-. You may have promised the top 8 players they are already seeded. But in that case please consider it for next year.
tl,dr: Thanks for posting, Kim! I like very soft region locks (offline+be grandmaster on the corresponding ladder for access to premier league) best. Seed for next seasons WCS from point totals (per region, ex. the 8 highest point totals from people that competed in Europe) instead "the best 8 in the last WCS Europe are qualified for next year".
Thanks, all, and sorry for the wall of text! I look forward to hearing your opinions!
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Things actually sound really promising. I don't think more drastic changes will help tbh, and they need more experience to properly evaluate. If they just give more attention to the regionals, and more room for grassroots and other means to expand on the playerbase and especially the pro-playerbase with more money, or housing or whatever in the regions, then I think the future will be quite promising.
Also they just have to go free to play multiplayer, and it does feel like they will. I just hope it wont be too long (i.e expansion), because they might miss their opportunity on the market...
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On October 15 2013 17:45 USvBleakill wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 17:36 Wintex wrote:On October 15 2013 17:33 BaneRiders wrote:On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing. I agree, the barcode men are not really helping the fans. The ladder seasons would become an online tournament in its own right with WCS points. I like! 100 pts for finishing as first in a ladder season end. 50 for second. 25 for third/fourth. 10 for 5/8th. Only on the region you are signed up for. This would be cool. Top 16 not in a league gets invited to challenger or seeded in the qualifier or something. Edit: changes to how you get into GM or drop out are needed. It would be cool but i see serious problems with that: - Potential cheating? - Stream sniping could be a problem - What about game fixing? I remember Demuslim playing (and loosing) Byun like 15 times in a row, how do you make sure that team mates or friends don't just snipe each other all night. Its not their fault that they get matched up constantly. - It could kill non wcs online Tournaments. Things like an all killing night in the ATC could take an entire evening and they aren't giving any points. Its cool but i think in the current ladder system its not makeable.
Yeah, these are tricky things to deal with. One idea would be to have a referee who can go back and check for inconsistencies, like one player loosing 15 times to another in a row. Another idea could ladder WCS point hours between 17:00-00:00 so that people can practice in the day.
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Can WCS KR be separated from GSL/OSL.
I think the korean scene is shrinking right now because of there are fewer tournaments than before.
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I am glad that Kim is commenting here, and that she is answering to all those(hectic) comments. I am looking forward to the changes, I think that Blizzard learned a lot from the current WCS.
When I read the interview, I knew there won't be a lot of new info, because this isn't an announcement, so I am quite happy with the answers. Sadly, I knew that there will be a lot of negative comments. Some people don't understand the answers, some of them don't want to read and some read just what they want.
All in all, good job Kim and keep up the good work.
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On October 15 2013 17:35 kimaphan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 14:48 Yakikorosu wrote:
It would be helpful if Blizzard could share more details about their reasoning behind going from 4 to 3 seasons and eliminating Season Finals. I understand that theoretically it's "to free up room for more non-WCS events," but has this decision been taken with some sort of confirmation that there WILL BE more non-WCS events than there were this year, or is that just an assumption Blizzard is making? More DreamHacks and IEMs are great but will there be GSLs/OSLs outside of WCS KR? If we're only having three GSLs/OSLs combined the entire year in 2014, that's pretty sad... Even this four this year didn't feel like very many, and that was with three Season Finals acting as additional "mini-tournaments."
I mentioned this in another reply, but another significant reason for having three seasons next year is to allow us to spread out the schedule of a particular season to make the format more linear and simpler. We received feedback this year that each season felt too crammed. The qualifiers and challenger league of following season were taking place during the same time as the premier league of the current season. This was confusing to many of our viewers.
I don't intend to be rude, but somehow I feel the question has not really been answered.
I'd agree with Yakikorosu that 3 GSL/OSL seasons combined for the entire year 2014 would be really sad and horrible for the Korean scene. With the introduction of the WCS 2013, the number of tournaments was cut to 3 + the pricepool was cut as well. Reducing the number of tournaments even more (-> cutting the season finals) seems really bad and weird, especially for the Korean scene.
To come back to the question by Yakikorosu: Do you just HOPE there will be more tournaments, or WILL there be more tournaments? Once again: Especially in Korea, will there be more GSL/OSL season outside the WCS system?
Because 3 tournaments with the current price pool seems really bad for the amount of Korean progamers right now.
And in general: How do you feel about, what WCS has done to the Korean scene?
And: I think it's great to answer the questions here, WCS 2013 was not perfect and I'm happy there will be changes. Even though we don't know what kind of changes we'll see :-P
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On October 15 2013 17:33 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing. I agree, the barcode men are not really helping the fans. The ladder seasons would become an online tournament in its own right with WCS points. I like!
We need online ladder tournaments a la WC3. Rewards could include:
1. League promotion, along with MMR boost, to prevent smurfs abusing too frequently (and if they buy new accounts, Blizz is making money and we can pretend SC2 is a little more successful, to counter our usual habit of acting like it's worse off than it is)
2. Icons for tournament wins, just like in WC3. While you're at it, bring in some of those WC3 icons. If you win a diamond tournament, then with the promotion to master's would be the standard master's icon. It might not feel that deserved, but only if master's players who should be beating the diamond players aren't defending their turf that night.
3. The best reward is the satisfaction of having even won one series in a tournament, if not the whole thing.
4. Chat channels with icons from tournament participation would be pretty sweet.
Blizzard already spoke of adding tournaments way back when discussing things they wanted to add in or around HotS. It's been ages since hearing more about these tournaments though, unless a recent announcement slipped by me (I get 99% of my news on TL, not battle.net)
Tournaments should probably be league restricted, such as bronze-silver, silver-gold, gold-platinum, etc., all the way up to master's-GM. At the top level, discretion would be used before giving promotions to GM, based on actual strength of participants. Maybe run tournaments concurrently if it becomes popular enough.
This could ultimately feed into WCS, though it should be clear to most who participate that WCS is miles and years away from being a place they'd ever compete.
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EPT
