On September 16 2014 09:42 Crot4le wrote: I was really hoping that the KeSPA president was hinting at a new individual league like GSL/OSL (rip ) when he said that there will be more opportunities for Koreans to earn WCS points next year.
WCS points for Proleague is a ridiculous policy and a lazy band-aid over a problem which runs much deeper (not enough tournaments in Korea). Having WCS points in Proleague is also something that is going to influence the coaches' decisions that should not be relevant in a team league.
yup.. having WCS points for Proleague further widens the gap between foreign and korean scene. it totally discourages any kespa player to travel completely...
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).
Exactly. Awarding WCS points for Proleague is not the solution to this problem, another individual league to complement GSL is.
making posts like "the solution is to add another league" without actually going into details of who would create and sponsor the league is pointless. hey guys the solution isnt a region lock, its to invent teleportation so there are no regions anymore. why hasnt david kim invented teleportation yet
i think some fans need a reality check on how relevant this scene is, how much you can accomplish and when the right time is to compromise on the best solution thats actually possible rather than begging jesus for miracles
Blizzard in collaboration with KeSPA and SPOTV. It's Blizzard who have created this fragile situation in Korean with the implementation of a region lock so really it should be them who make sure the safeguard (new individual league) is in place to protect the Korean scene from this decision.
Yes! This is what I've been waiting for. I understand why everyone is so against Proleague giving out WCS points, but honestly have you guys watched the games? Many of the Proleague matches have been, from my perspective, the most entertaining to watch of any SC2 event. The league contains a high concentration of by far the best players on the planet, and I genuinely feel like it's a win for everyone involved. The best players in the world get rewarded for their hard work, Blizzard gets to have the best players in the world as a part of the WCS finals, KeSPA gets more exposure of their players, and the fans get the most entertaining matches from the most high-level players. The only downside is getting over the moral technicality that this is a "team league". That may be true, but it still depends on individual performances, and I'm sure the points will be awarded on such a basis (with possible small additional incentives for team success). I sincerely hope they give WCS points for Proleague--who knows, it may actually provide enough incentive for a foreign team to join and actually take it seriously.
On September 16 2014 10:36 Ingenero wrote: Yes! This is what I've been waiting for. I understand why everyone is so against Proleague giving out WCS points, but honestly have you guys watched the games? Many of the Proleague matches have been, from my perspective, the most entertaining to watch of any SC2 event. The league contains a high concentration of by far the best players on the planet, and I genuinely feel like it's a win for everyone involved. The best players in the world get rewarded for their hard work, Blizzard gets to have the best players in the world as a part of the WCS finals, KeSPA gets more exposure of their players, and the fans get the most entertaining matches from the most high-level players. The only downside is getting over the moral technicality that this is a "team league". That may be true, but it still depends on individual performances, and I'm sure the points will be awarded on such a basis (with possible small additional incentives for team success). I sincerely hope they give WCS points for Proleague--who knows, it may actually provide enough incentive for a foreign team to join and actually take it seriously.
a lot of people think that proleague achievements cannot be judged on an individual meritocratic basis because of the elements of map preparation or whatever. while i understand their logic i still find it a bit silly because to dominate in proleague you still have to consistently whip the cream of the crop of korean players on one of the biggest stages and at one of the highest levels. it's not as if they're playing 2v2s. if you can give equal points to wcs am/eu champion in the current system then i don't see how it's so different to give points to players who win 1v1 games in a proleague format. yeah ok its a different environment but so is beating WCS AM challenger compared to code A
and i find it doubly silly that TB is against "team league achievements for 1v1 points" considering he ran a mixed format league with starbow, 2v2s, community maps etc o_O what's so wrong with recognizing players' achievements in various formats as long as the games played are still unmodded 1v1s?
and i find it doubly silly that TB is against "team league achievements for 1v1 points" considering he ran a mixed format league with starbow, 2v2s, community maps etc o_O what's so wrong with recognizing players' achievements in various formats as long as the games played are still unmodded 1v1s?
"I'm going to somehow equivocate a casual $500 a match format focused on doing different stuff to usual to fucking Proleague with WCS points, that'll be a strong argument! - Nobody ever.
On September 16 2014 08:33 ninjamyst wrote: Is Blizzcon about the top BEST players in terms of skills or top POPULAR players that are also very good (but may not be the best)?? I rather watch popular players than relatively unknown "best" players. You have to think "general" audience. Alot of people posting here wanting to see the "best" in skills are only a small percentage of Blizzard's target audience...
Then watch streams and Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
That's not the point of the Blizzcon tournament.
what is the point of blizzcon then? is there a source of blizzard literally saying "the point of blizzcon is to host the 16 most skilled players"?
awarding points based on separate competitions players can choose to attend or not attend or may have issues attending is never ever going to result in "the 16 most skilled players." the best you could do for that would be an invitational and that would open up even more of a shitstorm when the community thinks the #16 spot should have gone to #17 or gripes about no chance for foreigners etc
"After much discussion and collaboration with our partners, we've developed a new tournament series with a cohesive structure and unified global point ranking system that ties major StarCraft II competition together. The StarCraft II WCS will give eSports fans an exciting, globe-circling story to follow throughout the year
[...]
Using a unified ranking system to track player performance across multiple seasons and events will help make it easier to clearly identify the world's best StarCraft II players, and make it so everyone can follow along with their favorite players as stories and events unfold. Every match will carry added excitement, and every outcome will be more meaningful."
From my understanding, they just wanted to tie all the already existing tournaments together.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify: it seems that the point of WCS is to encourage players and viewers alike to pay attention to the various tournaments going on in the StarCraft II scene by giving those tournaments additional value as a qualification method for Blizzcon, and thus helping to sustain the scene. By this understanding Blizzcon exists specifically to discourage players from staying in their corner and not participating in the overall scene. In other words, what people are criticising most about it is specifically its reason for existing.
So Blizzcon goals go directly against the fundamentals of Proleague. It's a shame imo, because I think the KR scene is what we should be looking up to develop in the foreign world, not to mention that Proleague is probably the only thing that keeps the KR scene together...
I have no experience with business matters of this level, so I'm just speculating, but the way I understand it, it makes a lot of sense for Blizzard. I mean, their goal is for StarCraft to stay popular so they can keep selling games, so it doesn't matter much to them whether Blizzcon or IEM or GSL or the Proleague Grand Finals or whatever is the most hyped tournament of the year, so long as the hype exists at all. With WCS, the best players who travel to the most tournaments get to compete for the grand prize, so it encourages good players to go to as many tournaments as possible, thus increasing the overall quality of the scene, and generating more hype overall. From that perspective, WCS has been a great success. The foreigner-to-Korean ratio of tournaments has decreased a lot, and the foreigners still participating are a lot better than they used to be. They wanted as many good players as possible at as many tournaments as possible because they figured that would make the scene more stable.
From this perspective, these protectionism methods also make sense. People are excited to see foreigners, so they institute region-locking to give foreigners better chances. People like to see KeSPA players who rarely leave their little bubble, so they want to give points to Proleague to give those players better chances. It all seems to be about maximising the popularity of StarCraft.
If you want to award WCS points to SPL, the worst I'd allow is to give a flat # of points to every player on a proleague team, maaayyybe a few extra for the winning teams.
None of this individual win stuff, I don't want more short-sighted WCS crap ruining my leagues.
On September 16 2014 08:33 ninjamyst wrote: Is Blizzcon about the top BEST players in terms of skills or top POPULAR players that are also very good (but may not be the best)?? I rather watch popular players than relatively unknown "best" players. You have to think "general" audience. Alot of people posting here wanting to see the "best" in skills are only a small percentage of Blizzard's target audience...
Then watch streams and Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
That's not the point of the Blizzcon tournament.
what is the point of blizzcon then? is there a source of blizzard literally saying "the point of blizzcon is to host the 16 most skilled players"?
awarding points based on separate competitions players can choose to attend or not attend or may have issues attending is never ever going to result in "the 16 most skilled players." the best you could do for that would be an invitational and that would open up even more of a shitstorm when the community thinks the #16 spot should have gone to #17 or gripes about no chance for foreigners etc
"After much discussion and collaboration with our partners, we've developed a new tournament series with a cohesive structure and unified global point ranking system that ties major StarCraft II competition together. The StarCraft II WCS will give eSports fans an exciting, globe-circling story to follow throughout the year
[...]
Using a unified ranking system to track player performance across multiple seasons and events will help make it easier to clearly identify the world's best StarCraft II players, and make it so everyone can follow along with their favorite players as stories and events unfold. Every match will carry added excitement, and every outcome will be more meaningful."
From my understanding, they just wanted to tie all the already existing tournaments together.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify: it seems that the point of WCS is to encourage players and viewers alike to pay attention to the various tournaments going on in the StarCraft II scene by giving those tournaments additional value as a qualification method for Blizzcon, and thus helping to sustain the scene. By this understanding Blizzcon exists specifically to discourage players from staying in their corner and not participating in the overall scene. In other words, what people are criticising most about it is specifically its reason for existing.
So Blizzcon goals go directly against the fundamentals of Proleague. It's a shame imo, because I think the KR scene is what we should be looking up to develop in the foreign world, not to mention that Proleague is probably the only thing that keeps the KR scene together...
I have no experience with business matters of this level, so I'm just speculating, but the way I understand it, it makes a lot of sense for Blizzard. I mean, their goal is for StarCraft to stay popular so they can keep selling games, so it doesn't matter much to them whether Blizzcon or IEM or GSL or the Proleague Grand Finals or whatever is the most hyped tournament of the year, so long as the hype exists at all. With WCS, the best players who travel to the most tournaments get to compete for the grand prize, so it encourages good players to go to as many tournaments as possible, thus increasing the overall quality of the scene, and generating more hype overall. From that perspective, WCS has been a great success. The foreigner-to-Korean ratio of tournaments has decreased a lot, and the foreigners still participating are a lot better than they used to be. They wanted as many good players as possible at as many tournaments as possible because they figured that would make the scene more stable.
From this perspective, these protectionism methods also make sense. People are excited to see foreigners, so they institute region-locking to give foreigners better chances. People like to see KeSPA players who rarely leave their little bubble, so they want to give points to Proleague to give those players better chances. It all seems to be about maximising the popularity of StarCraft.
Yeah I think by awarding WCS points to PL they are trying to reward players so they can do good in WCS without invading other regions, so this along with the region lock encourages the players to stay at home. Makes sense.
I feel bad for Axiom tho, they're getting the worst of both things (region lock and points awarded to PL) and none of the benefits.
On September 16 2014 09:33 TotalBiscuit wrote: I'm obviously against this from a team point of view. Running a Proleague team is something that isn't financially viable to anyone who doesn't have a big KeSPA sponsor in my honest opinion. While it might compensate for not sending proleague players out of the country to foreign events, it also forces non-Proleague teams to fly out to more foreign events to keep up, not to mention the nonsensical nature of giving out WCS individual points for team efforts.
2015 - Year of "Lets see how many ways we can screw Axiom". Let me know if there's anything else so we can start transitioning to Hearthstone or something.
Surely you don't believe this. How can it be a method of "allowing Kespa to catch up" AND a creates a scenario where "non-Kespa has to travel more to catch up". If there's a difference between point accessibility, one side has to catch up, not both. The PL point introduction would flatten the playing field more than it current is (which is heavily skewed against Kespa). I think it's reasonable to assume the Proleague points wouldn't be so grossly inflated that allows a sole-proleague player to have a realistic chance at going to Blizzcon for it.
I don't think Proleague is going to be equivalent to the two dozen+ major/premier tournaments that everybody else was going to attend anyway (of which Kespa will probably continue to not attend).
On September 16 2014 08:33 ninjamyst wrote: Is Blizzcon about the top BEST players in terms of skills or top POPULAR players that are also very good (but may not be the best)?? I rather watch popular players than relatively unknown "best" players. You have to think "general" audience. Alot of people posting here wanting to see the "best" in skills are only a small percentage of Blizzard's target audience...
Then watch streams and Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
That's not the point of the Blizzcon tournament.
what is the point of blizzcon then? is there a source of blizzard literally saying "the point of blizzcon is to host the 16 most skilled players"?
awarding points based on separate competitions players can choose to attend or not attend or may have issues attending is never ever going to result in "the 16 most skilled players." the best you could do for that would be an invitational and that would open up even more of a shitstorm when the community thinks the #16 spot should have gone to #17 or gripes about no chance for foreigners etc
"After much discussion and collaboration with our partners, we've developed a new tournament series with a cohesive structure and unified global point ranking system that ties major StarCraft II competition together. The StarCraft II WCS will give eSports fans an exciting, globe-circling story to follow throughout the year
[...]
Using a unified ranking system to track player performance across multiple seasons and events will help make it easier to clearly identify the world's best StarCraft II players, and make it so everyone can follow along with their favorite players as stories and events unfold. Every match will carry added excitement, and every outcome will be more meaningful."
From my understanding, they just wanted to tie all the already existing tournaments together.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify: it seems that the point of WCS is to encourage players and viewers alike to pay attention to the various tournaments going on in the StarCraft II scene by giving those tournaments additional value as a qualification method for Blizzcon, and thus helping to sustain the scene. By this understanding Blizzcon exists specifically to discourage players from staying in their corner and not participating in the overall scene. In other words, what people are criticising most about it is specifically its reason for existing.
So Blizzcon goals go directly against the fundamentals of Proleague. It's a shame imo, because I think the KR scene is what we should be looking up to develop in the foreign world, not to mention that Proleague is probably the only thing that keeps the KR scene together...
I have no experience with business matters of this level, so I'm just speculating, but the way I understand it, it makes a lot of sense for Blizzard. I mean, their goal is for StarCraft to stay popular so they can keep selling games, so it doesn't matter much to them whether Blizzcon or IEM or GSL or the Proleague Grand Finals or whatever is the most hyped tournament of the year, so long as the hype exists at all. With WCS, the best players who travel to the most tournaments get to compete for the grand prize, so it encourages good players to go to as many tournaments as possible, thus increasing the overall quality of the scene, and generating more hype overall. From that perspective, WCS has been a great success. The foreigner-to-Korean ratio of tournaments has decreased a lot, and the foreigners still participating are a lot better than they used to be. They wanted as many good players as possible at as many tournaments as possible because they figured that would make the scene more stable.
From this perspective, these protectionism methods also make sense. People are excited to see foreigners, so they institute region-locking to give foreigners better chances. People like to see KeSPA players who rarely leave their little bubble, so they want to give points to Proleague to give those players better chances. It all seems to be about maximising the popularity of StarCraft.
Yeah I think by awarding WCS points to PL they are trying to reward players so they can do good in WCS without invading other regions, so this along with the region lock encourages the players to stay at home. Makes sense.
I feel bad for Axiom tho, they're getting the worst of both things (region lock and points awarded to PL) and none of the benefits.
Nah, I think Blizzard would love to have KeSPA players go abroad and invade as many tournaments as possible, but since they're clearly not going to, they need to donate points so they can at least get them to Blizzcon.
On September 16 2014 09:33 TotalBiscuit wrote: I'm obviously against this from a team point of view. Running a Proleague team is something that isn't financially viable to anyone who doesn't have a big KeSPA sponsor in my honest opinion. While it might compensate for not sending proleague players out of the country to foreign events, it also forces non-Proleague teams to fly out to more foreign events to keep up, not to mention the nonsensical nature of giving out WCS individual points for team efforts.
2015 - Year of "Lets see how many ways we can screw Axiom". Let me know if there's anything else so we can start transitioning to Hearthstone or something.
Surely you don't believe this. How can it be a method of "allowing Kespa to catch up" AND a creates a scenario where "non-Kespa has to travel more to catch up". If there's a difference between point accessibility, one side has to catch up, not both. The PL point introduction would flatten the playing field more than it current is (which is heavily skewed against Kespa). I think it's reasonable to assume the Proleague points wouldn't be so grossly inflated that allows a sole-proleague player to have a realistic chance at going to Blizzcon for it.
I don't think Proleague is going to be equivalent to the two dozen+ major/premier tournaments that everybody else was going to attend anyway (of which Kespa will probably continue to not attend).
You're incorrectly assuming that one is either KeSPA or non-Korean. There are plenty of Korean players not signed onto a KeSPA team.
On September 16 2014 08:33 ninjamyst wrote: Is Blizzcon about the top BEST players in terms of skills or top POPULAR players that are also very good (but may not be the best)?? I rather watch popular players than relatively unknown "best" players. You have to think "general" audience. Alot of people posting here wanting to see the "best" in skills are only a small percentage of Blizzard's target audience...
Then watch streams and Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
That's not the point of the Blizzcon tournament.
what is the point of blizzcon then? is there a source of blizzard literally saying "the point of blizzcon is to host the 16 most skilled players"?
awarding points based on separate competitions players can choose to attend or not attend or may have issues attending is never ever going to result in "the 16 most skilled players." the best you could do for that would be an invitational and that would open up even more of a shitstorm when the community thinks the #16 spot should have gone to #17 or gripes about no chance for foreigners etc
"After much discussion and collaboration with our partners, we've developed a new tournament series with a cohesive structure and unified global point ranking system that ties major StarCraft II competition together. The StarCraft II WCS will give eSports fans an exciting, globe-circling story to follow throughout the year
[...]
Using a unified ranking system to track player performance across multiple seasons and events will help make it easier to clearly identify the world's best StarCraft II players, and make it so everyone can follow along with their favorite players as stories and events unfold. Every match will carry added excitement, and every outcome will be more meaningful."
From my understanding, they just wanted to tie all the already existing tournaments together.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify: it seems that the point of WCS is to encourage players and viewers alike to pay attention to the various tournaments going on in the StarCraft II scene by giving those tournaments additional value as a qualification method for Blizzcon, and thus helping to sustain the scene. By this understanding Blizzcon exists specifically to discourage players from staying in their corner and not participating in the overall scene. In other words, what people are criticising most about it is specifically its reason for existing.
So Blizzcon goals go directly against the fundamentals of Proleague. It's a shame imo, because I think the KR scene is what we should be looking up to develop in the foreign world, not to mention that Proleague is probably the only thing that keeps the KR scene together...
I have no experience with business matters of this level, so I'm just speculating, but the way I understand it, it makes a lot of sense for Blizzard. I mean, their goal is for StarCraft to stay popular so they can keep selling games, so it doesn't matter much to them whether Blizzcon or IEM or GSL or the Proleague Grand Finals or whatever is the most hyped tournament of the year, so long as the hype exists at all. With WCS, the best players who travel to the most tournaments get to compete for the grand prize, so it encourages good players to go to as many tournaments as possible, thus increasing the overall quality of the scene, and generating more hype overall. From that perspective, WCS has been a great success. The foreigner-to-Korean ratio of tournaments has decreased a lot, and the foreigners still participating are a lot better than they used to be. They wanted as many good players as possible at as many tournaments as possible because they figured that would make the scene more stable.
From this perspective, these protectionism methods also make sense. People are excited to see foreigners, so they institute region-locking to give foreigners better chances. People like to see KeSPA players who rarely leave their little bubble, so they want to give points to Proleague to give those players better chances. It all seems to be about maximising the popularity of StarCraft.
Yeah I think by awarding WCS points to PL they are trying to reward players so they can do good in WCS without invading other regions, so this along with the region lock encourages the players to stay at home. Makes sense.
I feel bad for Axiom tho, they're getting the worst of both things (region lock and points awarded to PL) and none of the benefits.
Nah, I think Blizzard would love to have KeSPA players go abroad and invade as many tournaments as possible, but since they're clearly not going to, they need to donate points so they can at least get them to Blizzcon.
On September 16 2014 09:33 TotalBiscuit wrote: I'm obviously against this from a team point of view. Running a Proleague team is something that isn't financially viable to anyone who doesn't have a big KeSPA sponsor in my honest opinion. While it might compensate for not sending proleague players out of the country to foreign events, it also forces non-Proleague teams to fly out to more foreign events to keep up, not to mention the nonsensical nature of giving out WCS individual points for team efforts.
2015 - Year of "Lets see how many ways we can screw Axiom". Let me know if there's anything else so we can start transitioning to Hearthstone or something.
Surely you don't believe this. How can it be a method of "allowing Kespa to catch up" AND a creates a scenario where "non-Kespa has to travel more to catch up". If there's a difference between point accessibility, one side has to catch up, not both. The PL point introduction would flatten the playing field more than it current is (which is heavily skewed against Kespa). I think it's reasonable to assume the Proleague points wouldn't be so grossly inflated that allows a sole-proleague player to have a realistic chance at going to Blizzcon for it.
I don't think Proleague is going to be equivalent to the two dozen+ major/premier tournaments that everybody else was going to attend anyway (of which Kespa will probably continue to not attend).
You're incorrectly assuming that one is either KeSPA or non-Korean. There are plenty of Korean players not signed onto a KeSPA team.
There's kind of a strangeness to having WCS points in Proleague, depending on how the points will be distributed. Will it be team-based or individual? Will it be meritocratic per match or will overall rankings summed over the course of Proleague be used? Will there be weights on certain matches (like the ace match, playoffs, etc.)?
An interesting thing to note is that this can inflate teamleaguers' scores higher than they should be; there are a few players who excel at the BO1 way of the teamleague format, but don't do as well in extended series. Not sure if that's significant, just interesting.
On September 16 2014 09:33 TotalBiscuit wrote: I'm obviously against this from a team point of view. Running a Proleague team is something that isn't financially viable to anyone who doesn't have a big KeSPA sponsor in my honest opinion. While it might compensate for not sending proleague players out of the country to foreign events, it also forces non-Proleague teams to fly out to more foreign events to keep up, not to mention the nonsensical nature of giving out WCS individual points for team efforts.
2015 - Year of "Lets see how many ways we can screw Axiom". Let me know if there's anything else so we can start transitioning to Hearthstone or something.
You guys have 5 players, time to make a MOBA team.
On September 16 2014 08:33 ninjamyst wrote: Is Blizzcon about the top BEST players in terms of skills or top POPULAR players that are also very good (but may not be the best)?? I rather watch popular players than relatively unknown "best" players. You have to think "general" audience. Alot of people posting here wanting to see the "best" in skills are only a small percentage of Blizzard's target audience...
Then watch streams and Dreamhack, IEM, etc.
That's not the point of the Blizzcon tournament.
what is the point of blizzcon then? is there a source of blizzard literally saying "the point of blizzcon is to host the 16 most skilled players"?
awarding points based on separate competitions players can choose to attend or not attend or may have issues attending is never ever going to result in "the 16 most skilled players." the best you could do for that would be an invitational and that would open up even more of a shitstorm when the community thinks the #16 spot should have gone to #17 or gripes about no chance for foreigners etc
"After much discussion and collaboration with our partners, we've developed a new tournament series with a cohesive structure and unified global point ranking system that ties major StarCraft II competition together. The StarCraft II WCS will give eSports fans an exciting, globe-circling story to follow throughout the year
[...]
Using a unified ranking system to track player performance across multiple seasons and events will help make it easier to clearly identify the world's best StarCraft II players, and make it so everyone can follow along with their favorite players as stories and events unfold. Every match will carry added excitement, and every outcome will be more meaningful."
From my understanding, they just wanted to tie all the already existing tournaments together.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify: it seems that the point of WCS is to encourage players and viewers alike to pay attention to the various tournaments going on in the StarCraft II scene by giving those tournaments additional value as a qualification method for Blizzcon, and thus helping to sustain the scene. By this understanding Blizzcon exists specifically to discourage players from staying in their corner and not participating in the overall scene. In other words, what people are criticising most about it is specifically its reason for existing.
So Blizzcon goals go directly against the fundamentals of Proleague. It's a shame imo, because I think the KR scene is what we should be looking up to develop in the foreign world, not to mention that Proleague is probably the only thing that keeps the KR scene together...
I have no experience with business matters of this level, so I'm just speculating, but the way I understand it, it makes a lot of sense for Blizzard. I mean, their goal is for StarCraft to stay popular so they can keep selling games, so it doesn't matter much to them whether Blizzcon or IEM or GSL or the Proleague Grand Finals or whatever is the most hyped tournament of the year, so long as the hype exists at all. With WCS, the best players who travel to the most tournaments get to compete for the grand prize, so it encourages good players to go to as many tournaments as possible, thus increasing the overall quality of the scene, and generating more hype overall. From that perspective, WCS has been a great success. The foreigner-to-Korean ratio of tournaments has decreased a lot, and the foreigners still participating are a lot better than they used to be. They wanted as many good players as possible at as many tournaments as possible because they figured that would make the scene more stable.
From this perspective, these protectionism methods also make sense. People are excited to see foreigners, so they institute region-locking to give foreigners better chances. People like to see KeSPA players who rarely leave their little bubble, so they want to give points to Proleague to give those players better chances. It all seems to be about maximising the popularity of StarCraft.
Yeah I think by awarding WCS points to PL they are trying to reward players so they can do good in WCS without invading other regions, so this along with the region lock encourages the players to stay at home. Makes sense.
I feel bad for Axiom tho, they're getting the worst of both things (region lock and points awarded to PL) and none of the benefits.
Nah, I think Blizzard would love to have KeSPA players go abroad and invade as many tournaments as possible, but since they're clearly not going to, they need to donate points so they can at least get them to Blizzcon.
On September 16 2014 11:32 Zenbrez wrote:
On September 16 2014 09:33 TotalBiscuit wrote: I'm obviously against this from a team point of view. Running a Proleague team is something that isn't financially viable to anyone who doesn't have a big KeSPA sponsor in my honest opinion. While it might compensate for not sending proleague players out of the country to foreign events, it also forces non-Proleague teams to fly out to more foreign events to keep up, not to mention the nonsensical nature of giving out WCS individual points for team efforts.
2015 - Year of "Lets see how many ways we can screw Axiom". Let me know if there's anything else so we can start transitioning to Hearthstone or something.
Surely you don't believe this. How can it be a method of "allowing Kespa to catch up" AND a creates a scenario where "non-Kespa has to travel more to catch up". If there's a difference between point accessibility, one side has to catch up, not both. The PL point introduction would flatten the playing field more than it current is (which is heavily skewed against Kespa). I think it's reasonable to assume the Proleague points wouldn't be so grossly inflated that allows a sole-proleague player to have a realistic chance at going to Blizzcon for it.
I don't think Proleague is going to be equivalent to the two dozen+ major/premier tournaments that everybody else was going to attend anyway (of which Kespa will probably continue to not attend).
You're incorrectly assuming that one is either KeSPA or non-Korean. There are plenty of Korean players not signed onto a KeSPA team.
Sorry, you are right. Wasn't thinking of this in the correct scope.
Who are these korean players who are 1. not going to foreign events right now 2. not on a kespa team
And would they be even relevant for a top 16 anyway?
If you have noticed, there are a lot of really good Korean players that don't have a lot of WCS points because they are playing in proleague. Currently, do any of you believe that Bunny, who is a fantastic player, is better than Parting? I doubt many people would take that bet but that is what the rankings show as of today as Bunny is 22nd and Parting is 42nd.
To try to more accurately reflect who may be better, if Proleague did give some WCS points for winning, this would lessen that gap. Yes there would be even more Koreans in the top 16 but does that matter? I want to see the best players, not just the players that traveled to all the Dreamhacks.
To further support this, take a look at how Davis Cup runs alongside the ATP World Tour. For a long time in tennis, playing Davis Cup gave no points to competing players. Now, if you win, you get some points. Not a lot, but some. I think that following this model is better than not following it.
Only the best teams should have a shot at it. But honestly I don't see it being that attractive for foreign team, entire team roster to stay in Korea and giving up the foreign scene is a great expense
The fact that a player like Snute will probably get in over players like Soo, Rain, and Maru is evidence enough that the WCS point system needs radical changes, if it is to truly display the worlds 16 best players.
Without season finals, I see no other way of ensuring the foreigners get weeded out of Blizzcon besides giving more points to Korea.
Also, if individual tournaments opened up in Korea, foreigners would literally not have a shot. They probably wouldn't even come.
I don't understand why Totalbiscuit is mad, because none of his Axiom players are even close to Code S level. They would get whooped in GSL, PL, or an individual tournament in Korea. Region lock made it so they can't beat up on foreigners and koreigners. I think Axiom is going to die regardless, but don't blame it on this. The players simply aren't that good.
EPT
) when he said that there will be more opportunities for Koreans to earn WCS points next year.
