WCS Premier Players Cannot Be Considered Good - Page 12
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GGuMake
United States74 Posts
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Dumbledore
Sweden725 Posts
Woot, cos you have to know every small caster to "follow" esports? Are you serious? Well you know less physics than Stephen Hawking so clearly you are unaware of that the Earth is not flat. | ||
The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On February 21 2015 07:43 Cheerio wrote: I don't know about you, but I personally hate it when casters act like they know all and start building hierarchies of progamers only to have them fall apart every second time. Its ok to make predictions, being a smartass is not what casters should aim for. It isn't about being a smartass, it's about being honest to the viewers. That doesn't mean you have to shit on "the lesser" players at all, you actually could create great storylines with being more honest. The current scene just doesn't seem to be very interested in that part (which is a huge error imo). But yeah whatever, apparently all progamers are good progamers compared to each other ^^ | ||
Ottoman042
United States35 Posts
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H0i
Netherlands484 Posts
On February 21 2015 04:48 Incognoto wrote: I think what's really insulting is that Koreans aren't allowed to take part in the biggest international league, which is called WCS, because they're too good compared to foreigner scrubs. There are a number of legitimate foreign players but half the names in WCS premier league have nothing to do being there. Or perhaps it's a compliment to give them their own region entirely? Korea is a WCS region. It's a part of WCS. Blizzcon, the crowning WCS tournament, will probably have only koreans. | ||
Cheerio
Ukraine3178 Posts
On February 21 2015 07:52 The_Red_Viper wrote: It isn't about being a smartass, it's about being honest to the viewers. That doesn't mean you have to shit on "the lesser" players at all, you actually could create great storylines with being more honest. The current scene just doesn't seem to be very interested in that part (which is a huge error imo). But yeah whatever, apparently all progamers are good progamers compared to each other ^^ Yeah lets have the honest casting this way: "Ok, look, TLO won today but don't get too carried away guys. There is no way he is good coz there are soooo many koreans who are better than him. Byebye everyone, thanks for watching shitty starcraft" | ||
The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
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Xrero
United States120 Posts
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Frappucino
12 Posts
You can compare it with football, everyone who follow football knows if you want to watch the best players there is you can watch La Liga, Premier League, Bundesliga, or Serie A. French League (Ligue 1) is still good, but fans make careful assessments of players who excelled in league other than the big four : if i put players who excelled in Brazilian or French League to La Liga for example, can he still excel there? If anything football is worse, other than top 10 in each positions, other players are only called good or generic players lol. But its a non-issue in football. In regards to caster, once again you can compare it to the commentators in football : when you see two unknown football team plays, does it become a problem if the commentators praise the dribbling, shooting, or passing skills of the players? Nope, as long as the commentators don't overdo it. The point is casters and fans only do it to appreciate the players and not oblivious to the comparison, this issue is overblown really. Especially the casters, they should know about the skill gaps the most having observed so many games of pro-scene. | ||
I_PROTOSSED_MY_HW
22 Posts
First of all, if your definition of "good" is that a player is better than 99 % of the player pool for the game (i.e. saying somebody is good because they can consistently beat the majority of the casual player base), you have a problem. By using this definition, you make the word "good" superfluous in any high level competitive tournament, because all players would then be considered good, and you might as well not say anything about their skill level (there is also the fact that everybody knows that competitors in major tournaments vastly outclass the casual player base). In other words, you need to use the words describing player skill within context, and it follows that to get any sort of meaningful distinction when it comes to player skill, you need to compare a player's skill to other top players, not to some random people who play the game casually. Another problem with this usage of "good" is that the term becomes so vague that it becomes useless. For example, most people would agree that Taeja is much, much better than Harstem. If you call both of these players good, you lose the distinction that is the massive gap in these players' skill gaps. Sure, compared to the casual player base, Harstem is really good, but when compared to the top level SC players, Harstem is outright bad. Let me just say this before someone gets overly defensive: This is not an attack on Harstem and should not be interpreted as me shitting on him, it is just a statement about the nature of reality. Of course I could never, ever take a game off of Harstem, but that is not the point here. You do not need to be a top player in order to more or less coarsely categorize players' skills, just as you don't need to be a top-class chef in order to determine whether or not a certain dish tastes good, nor do you need to be a famous musician to determine whether or not a guitar solo is well executed. That being said, let me make the main argument of my post: Even if you want the word "good" to be all-encompassing for the top level players (as to become practically useless in my opinion), the problem is that casters outright lie to their audience in order to hype a game up. If we use the Taeja vs. Harstem example, the casters would go on about how they are both good players and on a good day Harstem could beat Taeja, when the truth is that once in a blue moon and <insert a lot of incredibly unlikely events here>, Harstem could take a set off of Taeja. Like OP's video explained, this is intellectually dishonest and frankly I don't really understand the thought process behind it. Let me provide you with two scenarios: 1. Casters proceed as normal, and hype the match between Taeja and Harstem. The match concludes as expected (Taeja crushes Harstem), and one of three conclusions will be reached: Either Harstem just had a really bad day (this point gets worse and worse as the players play more sets), the casters lied about the players' relative skill levels (I would consider this detrimental to procuring and maintaining your fanbase), or the casters don't know what they are talking about (in which case, why would you continue to listen to them?). 2. The casters are honest about the gap in skill levels, and throughout the match they explain why Taeja is better, and what Taeja does that makes him a better player. This allows the casual watcher to marvel at Taeja's skill, and really see what sets the players apart, besides getting to see skillful execution in various aspects of the game, as well as having this explained to them. The 2nd scenario is in my opinion better, both for the casual fanbase and for the more hardcore fans. You might argue that they have to hype it to attract an audience, but then I will argue that no matter how stupid a certain fan is, at some point he or she will realize that the casters are either morons or full of shit, and come to expect that matches that are hyped up as "good player vs. good player" will be one-sided molestations, and eventually become disinterested. All that being said, I just mute all streams nowadays with the exception of Artosis' casts, because of the aforementioned argument and also because I am not blind, and thus have no need to listen to the majority of casters. Wow, wall of text. Welp. | ||
ElMeanYo
United States1032 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12268 Posts
On February 21 2015 13:58 I_PROTOSSED_MY_HW wrote: Wow, wall of text. Welp. You do realize that when Taeja plays Harstem every single caster ever will tell you that Taeja is a massive favourite, right? It would really help if your criticism was actually based on reality... | ||
Cheerio
Ukraine3178 Posts
On February 21 2015 13:58 I_PROTOSSED_MY_HW wrote: First of all, if your definition of "good" is that a player is better than 99 % of the player pool for the game (i.e. saying somebody is good because they can consistently beat the majority of the casual player base), you have a problem. the real problem is not semantics that you are trying to argue, the real problem is that you are denying good players the credit their due. | ||
HolydaKing
21254 Posts
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Ace Frehley
2030 Posts
'Well, today Mana played well, but let us not forget that Mana IS NOT GOOD. Please, viewers, remember that good is Zest and Parting, not Mana, mkay?' | ||
Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Another problem with this usage of "good" is that the term becomes so vague that it becomes useless. For example, most people would agree that Taeja is much, much better than Harstem. If you call both of these players good, you lose the distinction that is the massive gap in these players' skill gaps. Sure, compared to the casual player base, Harstem is really good, but when compared to the top level SC players, Harstem is outright bad. Let me just say this before someone gets overly defensive: This is not an attack on Harstem and should not be interpreted as me shitting on him, it is just a statement about the nature of reality. Of course I could never, ever take a game off of Harstem, but that is not the point here. You do not need to be a top player in order to more or less coarsely categorize players' skills, just as you don't need to be a top-class chef in order to determine whether or not a certain dish tastes good, nor do you need to be a famous musician to determine whether or not a guitar solo is well executed. Taeja is really bad though as has been pointed out in various threads about "the best player of *something*". I wouldn't take him as an example for good. Maybe you could say Life is good, but let's be real for a moment, Life lost to Sjow at some point of his career. It would be quite offensive to all the people who didn't lose to Sjow to call Life good. Given that Sjow has retired due to how bad of a player he was (because why else would he retire!? It MUST be the reason!), I'd outright call Life shit too. To be honest, we shouldn't even call anyone these days good. Just think back of the old days when we had people that were really good at something: Pele at Football, Hermann Maier at Skiing, Lance Armstrong at doping... That's what we should be looking for when calling someone good. Maybe one could call Flash decent at playing Broodwar back in the days but I'd be very careful with this, after all Lance was really, really impressive at doping and he might be severely offended by the in comparison scrublike performances of Flash in Broodwar. I guess what it comes down to is that we shouldn't be using such an exact and well-defined measure as "good" (and please, if you haven't taken measure theory at some good university, just step away from using adjectives at all!) that losely. As a rule of thumb, only call the good players good players! | ||
The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On February 22 2015 02:05 Big J wrote: Taeja is really bad though as has been pointed out in various threads about "the best player of *something*". I wouldn't take him as an example for good. Maybe you could say Life is good, but let's be real for a moment, Life lost to Sjow at some point of his career. It would be quite offensive to all the people who didn't lose to Sjow to call Life good. Given that Sjow has retired due to how bad of a player he was (because why else would he retire!? It MUST be the reason!), I'd outright call Life shit too. To be honest, we shouldn't even call anyone these days good. Just think back of the old days when we had people that were really good at something: Pele at Football, Hermann Maier at Skiing, Lance Armstrong at doping... That's what we should be looking for when calling someone good. Maybe one could call Flash decent at playing Broodwar back in the days but I'd be very careful with this, after all Lance was really, really impressive at doping and he might be severely offended by the in comparison scrublike performances of Flash in Broodwar. I guess what it comes down to is that we shouldn't be using such an exact and well-defined measure as "good" (and please, if you haven't taken measure theory at some good university, just step away from using adjectives at all!) that losely. As a rule of thumb, only call the good players good players! I think we should call every progamer "good". They all put in so much effort, it would be really insulting to call them bad compared to others. It doesn't matter if your winrate is below 50% against koreans, you still are a good, or maybe even really good progamer. The koreans around 50% are very good. Then there are players who can make code S, but never really make it far, i think they are one of the best tbh. If we talk about title contenders (who never win one though), these palyers should be called the best of the best. Now we also have players like Innovation and Maru, Life, who actually are title contenders and won stuff, these should be called better than best of the best or best of the best of the best. If we do it like i just described there is no progamer who has to be sad that he is only average, they are all at least good. Even though "good" here is actually the worst, but hey it's still good ![]() | ||
-HuShang-
Canada393 Posts
in WCS player A is good and Player B is one of the best in the tournament. In IEM where there are tons of koreans player A is quite bad and player B is average-decent | ||
boxerfred
Germany8360 Posts
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Darthsanta13
United States564 Posts
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