Yesterday, in the finals of KeSPA Cup, Chief Executive of KeSPA Jun Byung Hun has made an appearance and gave a speech about the tournament and the state and future of SK Telecom Proleague heading into 2015.
Article has been posted on Daily e-Sports on 2014-09-14 19:19 about this event.
In one part of his interview he mentioned that he has talked to the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment Michael Morhaime, back in July, about the cooperation between Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Korea e-Sports Association, in which he also hinted if not confirmed that Proleague 2015 will be incorporated in WCS system and may award WCS points for the World Championship Series of 2015.
Yes they should be given to these players. You have so many players performing amazingly in pro league and missing out on foreign events because they chose to focus on this tournament. SoO isn't guranteed a blizzcon spot despite two final appearances, he deserves more points in the form of his pro league performance to help guarantee a spot
Much rather have more individual tournaments based in Korea, than rewarding WCS points for something that has nothing to do with individual performances, and that 99% of players cannot participate in (no, its not the same as MLG/DH/IEM, because everyone "can" participate, if they travel).
I'll quote myself from a thread where this got lost in a debate wether Catz thinks people are idiots or not:
On September 10 2014 19:27 sagi wrote: Giving points to Proleague might be the best way to compensate KeSPA players who can't attend smaller tournaments due to scheduling conflicts. It could also allocate points in much more even way among larger playerbase (around 4-5 players per team) in contrast to the "top few takes it all" of GSL/WCS.
Lets say a map win in PL grants you 20 points. This would have totaled 11100 points in this year making it almost equivalent of a single WCS tournament. However if we look at the stats for this year most players wouldn't get that much points.
As you can see this isn't a lot. Taking this into consideration even more points might be reasonable to make the point pool for the best players reflect atleast the structure of a tier 2 event. Naturally other scenarios could also work like giving top X players of each PL round some fixed amount of points. This however would most likely be a top heavy distribution and might tie players to PL even more (we had some players taking breaks this year to go to foreign events).
Thus the problem would be determining what is the right amount of points and how to divide them among the players. Even a small boost might help the very best to reach the finals. Also, from the current rules' point of view we have to remember that PL is not an open league. If I remember correctly, to award points they should be accessible to everyone through qualifiers.
WCS points for Proleague is just silly. Time and time again we have seen that people who do amazingly in team leagues (and PL in particular) can comically fail in individual leagues.
On September 15 2014 20:00 shabby wrote: Much rather have more individual tournaments based in Korea, than rewarding WCS points for something that has nothing to do with individual performances, and that 99% of players cannot participate in (no, its not the same as MLG/DH/IEM, because everyone "can" participate, if they travel).
This topic is getting clubbed to death.
DH, IEM and those tournaments are not created by blizzard, they are created by organizers that does it because they want to. They don't do it for gain, its people that work for free because they choose to.
You want those kinds of tournaments in korea, then please by all means go and organize them. Don't just randomly expect people to do things for free for you, especially not in a country far away for just the purpose of distribuate WCS points evenly.
On September 15 2014 20:00 shabby wrote: Much rather have more individual tournaments based in Korea, than rewarding WCS points for something that has nothing to do with individual performances, and that 99% of players cannot participate in (no, its not the same as MLG/DH/IEM, because everyone "can" participate, if they travel).
This topic is getting clubbed to death.
DH, IEM and those tournaments are not created by blizzard, they are created by organizers that does it because they want to. They don't do it for gain, its people that work for free because they choose to.
You want those kinds of tournaments in korea, then please by all means go and organize them. Don't just randomly expect people to do things for free for you, especially not in a country far away for just the purpose of distribuate WCS points evenly.
This would be the best solution, have more tournaments in Korea. But you would need someone to throw money in it and.. hem, I guess it's not very realistic. WCS points for proleague kind of look like the best option left
I'm very torn on this.. I think that ProLeague should be a self-dependent team league, not having any ties with the WCS SOLO league system.
On the other hand, Korean pros lack the ability to gather WCS points if they can not travel abroad. The ideal situation would of course be that Korean-only players have the same amount of opportunity to place for Blizzcon compared to foreigners/Koreans playing EU or NA. So in that sense this is good for them.
But I still don't like it. Is there no other way? I believe SCII is not in a very healthy position in Korea, so Korean versions of Dreamhack will probably have no way of financing the tournaments. Maybe award more points for Code A and Code S?
I think that will be difficult to add WCS Points to a Team League, it might have a very precise points system.
But imho, the most important think for KeSPA is to collaborate with Blizzard to organize their calendar to allow players to participate to foreigner events. It will be better for the players, that can visit the world and compete outside of korea, it's better for Blizzard, because the top16 will be near to the REAL top 16, and it will be better for the events because of the high level of the games.
Don't forget Proleague is what is holding the Korean scene up and telling korean players if they want to compete at blizzcon they have to win GSL at least once or you are going to find it very tough to go is a crime. The teams they play on are stable for the most part but the teams are focused on proleague for obvious sponsorship reasons so the teams players must focus on proleague. As someone pointed out with the 20 points per win system the players dont actually get that many points unless they are a monster( which means they deserve as much points as they would get).
Koreans shouldnt get punished now that they are region locked simply because they dont want to leave a stable kespa team
this would be great for both parts imo. its just stupid that we may have a season finals without maybe the three best players in the world. blizzard can't afford that and neither can kespa.
Better soultions would be to work around the problem. PL giving WCS points is as much damaging to the competetive integrity of WCS as giving points to invited players is.
KeSPA sends one player from each team to a couple of foreign events, or something along those lines, would be better.
Korea certainly needs more WCS points and encouraging the top players to stay and play in the scene's premier team league can hardly be a bad thing. They often give up the opportunity to travel to DH's and IEM's because of these team commitments. It seems foolish to deprive the supposed 'world cup' of starcraft of some of its best players because they're too busy promoting our scene's flagship teamleague.
On September 15 2014 20:00 shabby wrote: Much rather have more individual tournaments based in Korea, than rewarding WCS points for something that has nothing to do with individual performances, and that 99% of players cannot participate in (no, its not the same as MLG/DH/IEM, because everyone "can" participate, if they travel).
Yes of course more tournaments would be better, but Korea just doesn't seem to be able to sustain them yet (for various reasons though I'm sure it's possible if they thought more internationally). Saying proleague has nothing to do with individual performance is just ridiculous. It's made up of individual 1v1 Bo1's and is arguably more competitive than some majors (Hello Moscow!). It's not going to be KT wins and the whole team gets points (makes 0 sense) but individuals being awarded by results. Winning regularly at PL means consistent excellence and constant adaptation (players have a week to figure you out) rather than the lucky streak needed for deep, weekend tournament runs.
As for 99% of players can't participate in proleague. So what? The rest of the world still has plenty of opportunity for points and a couple more proleague players qualifying for Blizzcon should be welcomed.
On September 15 2014 21:00 Darkdwarf wrote: PL giving WCS points is as much damaging to the competetive integrity of WCS as giving points to invited players is.
The real thing damaging the competitive integrity of WCS is, if locked today, players like San and Stardust would be ranked #7 and #8 whilst soO and Rain wouldn't even qualify.
Kespa playrs cant participate in foreign events.it costs ... they only send the big names.what they should do is make more special events like in bw and award them with tier 2 wcs points.
hmm sounds annoying, while some people might like it there are also enough against it. And for me its more a confirmation that Korea won't get to many tournaments. On the other hand if true it would confirm that they will open up to everyone. Would laugh my ass of though if people would get points for losing in a bo1 tough.
hmm, I would be vehemently opposed to this. This would mean that WCS points from here on in are not earned on merit but on whether your coach fields you or not.
It also rubs me the wrong way that people feel a need to compensate people who made a financial choice to sign for a Kespa team, damn well knowing that it would cost them WCS points. They made a choice and it has a disadvantage, oh noes, we must take that disadvantage away!
EPT![[image loading]](http://i60.tinypic.com/2lxb85l.png)
