For fans and spectators, the story of competition, the story of SC2 belongs to its Champions and Kongs. The players that time after time after time continuously win the tournament and prove themselves to be the best (or second best). They are the ones that build a legacy, a dynasty. And in many ways that is correct. Competition is a system made to find out who is the strongest, who is the best, who is the Champion.
Yet what about the non-Champions? The players that never reach the podium, never raise the trophy? For them, Curious’ story, Curious’ trials and Curious’ career are much more representative of their lives and stories in SC2. Only an incredibly small percentage of players become champions. Even less become multiple time Champions. Most players generally follow somewhere between bad (Inori or J come to mind) to above average. Despite being in the top 0.50 percentile of SC2 players around the world, there is a clear gap between the average pro player or above average pro player to a Champion caliber player. Once players come to realize this reality, they are faced with a decision. To accept that they will never win or to throw themselves against that barrier over and over and over again until they either win or they break. For those that take the second choice, a Championship becomes all the more valuable as a testament to their skill, hard work and perseverance. But most never win. The barrier between the above average player and a Champion is blooded with the failures of countless challengers.
Eventually, they fall down. Eventually a player can only challenge this glass ceiling so many times before they stop believing in themselves. These players just fade away. For them there is no goodbye, no final victory, no tangible marker to show the world this was where they passed.
And Curious has seen them all come and go (and in some cases come and go multiple times). He has been here nearly since the beginning (his first recorded game was a Zotac Cup played on January 1st, 2011.) In that time we have had hundreds of players. In that time we have had hundreds fall by the wayside. If you count the players that have been playing from 2011 to now, players that have not retired and have not won a Championship, there were 10: Ragnarok, Symbol, Gumiho, Losira, Keen, Bboongbboong, Hack, Dream, Billowy and Curious.
Now there are 9. At the beginning of Code S season 2, Curious finally hit that glass ceiling too many times. He announced his plans to retire and go to the military. No one was surprised. He hadn’t been playing well for a long time and while he had a few strong results throughout his career, he was more well known for being the Code S gatekeeper, a player you beat to prove you deserved to be in the playoffs. For Curious, that role was never enough. So he resigned himself to preparing for what he believed were the last career games of his life.
Perhaps Curious' skill had returned to his peak form. Perhaps the resignation of knowing he would retire after had lifted all of his nerves away. Perhaps he had walked under a lucky star. He started the GSL with his head bowed and his confidence dead. The only thing he had left were the thousands of hours he had ingrained into his body through 5 years of practice. And for once they did not fail him. He breezed through the ro32 and he breezed through the ro16 and he made the largest run of his HotS career as he got to the ro4 of GSL.
Yet in the end, it was still just a ro4 result. It was in the hardest tournament in the world, but there was no trophy, there was no achievement, not for a player that had spent years trying to win a Championship.
Which is what makes today’s victory so special. Today Curious won DH Valencia. Today Curious for the first time ever walked onto the stage and raised the trophy high. Today he smiled wide for the first time ever at the end of a competition, no longer having to hold back his emotions so he can play at his best. Today, Curious stands up a Champion. Today for one day, hard work won. Today for one day, Curious stands up with the Dreamhack Star, a tangible award to the 5 years of work he has put into this game. Today for one day, Curious won a Championship not only for himself, but for all those others who never could.
On July 18 2015 16:58 SuperHofmann wrote: I wasn't around Sc2 5 years ago. At that time, the Code A championship (that Curious won at 2011 GSL October) wasn't considered a good achievement?
It wasn't, Code A at the time was largely overlooked despite being hard as fuck sometimes even harder than Code S.
Well, at least the new map pool make some very happy, and i kinda like Curious. But two ZvZ finals in a row in two cups... Well i hope we will not get stuck with this horrible map pool for months, lol.
On July 18 2015 18:19 xongnox wrote: Well, at least the new map pool make some very happy, and i kinda like Curious. But two ZvZ finals in a row in two cups... Well i hope we will not get stuck with this horrible map pool for months, lol.
before that, Protoss has won 6 previous premier tournaments in a row (exlcuding WCS which is as premier as Taiwanese Open League). Unless you want to claim that there was a period of 5 months Protoss dominance, I don't think there's a reason to call the wins of soO and Curious a result of map pool change more than the fact that they obliterated everyone else on their way to the trophy.
On July 18 2015 18:19 xongnox wrote: Well, at least the new map pool make some very happy, and i kinda like Curious. But two ZvZ finals in a row in two cups... Well i hope we will not get stuck with this horrible map pool for months, lol.
before that, Protoss has won 6 previous premier tournaments (exlcuding WCS which is as premier as Taiwanese Open League)
Excluding WCS, Terran has won 1 premier tournament this year, I suggest we make the map pool better for Terran! All races imba!
Clearly the best player at the tournament won Dreamhack.
On July 18 2015 18:19 xongnox wrote: Well, at least the new map pool make some very happy, and i kinda like Curious. But two ZvZ finals in a row in two cups... Well i hope we will not get stuck with this horrible map pool for months, lol.
before that, Protoss has won 6 previous premier tournaments in a row (exlcuding WCS which is as premier as Taiwanese Open League). Unless you want to claim that there was a period of 5 months Protoss dominance, I don't think there's a reason to call the wins of soO and Curious a result of map pool change more than the fact that they obliterated everyone else on their way to the trophy.
Well, protoss was overly dominating since at least January, everyone knows that. Now we have a new map pool, horrible for terrans, ok for protoss and good for zergs. Guess what happened ? we had 2 ZvZ finals in a row.
I personally rate Curious way stronger than Panic, but when yous watch the results per map ( Curious won Moonlight, Bridgehead, Iron, with this proxy-hatch rush on Bridgehead. ), you can't hide the fact the the result could be totally different if only the last map was somehow normal or decent. And this is only one example.
And you can take nearly every match at Kespa Cup and see the map influence. That was super huge. The fact, well know by every decent player, is that maps plays a HUGE factor in the balance of the game, and the actual map pool is broken.
The only race that can complain now is Terran. Protoss won GSL, SSL and HSC. Zerg won KeSPA Cup and DH. The main problem is that the best koreans don't travel, so if Maru/Innovation/Dream stay all the time in Seul is hard to compare to other races that have their best travelling (Rain, Classic, Parting...)
Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
On July 18 2015 19:27 xongnox wrote: Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
So when a Terran isn't in the finals of the last two cups with good Terrans, there's suddenly a huge problem and we need to cry IMBA IMBA IMBA? >.> And yes, Curious is a Code S Ro4 player, he is way better than FanTaSy and GuMiho (won't even talk about TaeJa lol), whatever the Terran-supremacist propaganda says.
On July 18 2015 19:27 xongnox wrote: Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
All the guys that are winning foreigner events are top tier P/Z (looking at GSL/SSL ranking). The only Terrans that travel are about Ro32. Curious made the top4, Rain, Classic won it, Parting is a runner up. GuMiho, Fantasy are nothing compared.
On July 18 2015 19:27 xongnox wrote: Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
So when a Terran isn't in the finals of the last two cups with good Terrans, there's suddenly a huge problem and we need to cry IMBA IMBA IMBA? >.>
Terran has the least premier tournament wins and final appearances of all 3 races this year. And if you insist that neither Terran is weaker than the other races, nor does the map pool have anything to do with it, I call worst bracket luck for Terran.
Fitting that the only Terran to reach the GSL semis would be MMA in that case.
On July 18 2015 19:27 xongnox wrote: Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
So when a Terran isn't in the finals of the last two cups with good Terrans, there's suddenly a huge problem and we need to cry IMBA IMBA IMBA? >.>
Terran has the least premier tournament wins and final appearances of all 3 races this year. And if you insist that neither Terran is weaker than the other races, nor does the map pool have anything to do with it, I call worst bracket luck for Terran.
Fitting that the only Terran to reach the GSL semis would be MMA in that case.
Since when is the number of premier tournaments wins a relevant metric to measure balance? The current figures are 2 wins for T, 5 for Z and 6 for P. Guess what? By changing the outcome of only one game per finals, we could have 3T, 3Z, 7P, or 3T, 4Z, 6P. By changing the outcome of only two games per final (something very small and insignificant on the scale of a tournament !) we could have 4T, 4Z, 5P, something as balanced as it goes. See? The number of premier wins is meaningless. Or if you want to look at it another way, consider this : during the BL-infestor era, the number of Zerg premier wins is not significantly higher than T and P's.
If you really want something involving finals, - which is absurd in itself because there are so many factors deciding who's in the finals, from bracket luck to players involved - it would be more indicative to look at the number of mirror finals for each race, as in fact what we observe in the BLfestor era, the GOMTvT era and the Golden Protoss era is an unnaturally high number of mirror finals. This year so far : 1 PvP finals, 1 TvT finals, 2 ZvZ finals. If you exclude foreign tournaments : 1 for each. Magic. Meanwhile, the other usually used indicators of balance (number of TvT/ZvZ/PvP and number of Terrans in the Ro32 of Korean tournaments) are fine.
On July 18 2015 20:58 desRow wrote: Amazing words to describe an amazing story. I wasn't aware he's going to retire and go to the army, that's really sad. Does anyone know when?
He said he was retiring once he lost in GSL. Said this after Code A. But then he went to the ro4 so no one knows if he still wants to retire.
On July 18 2015 19:27 xongnox wrote: Because you consider FanTaSy; GuMiho; Taeja a weaker line-up than Curious; True; Huyn ?
And there was the best terans in Kespa Cup (Maru, Dream, etc.). so yo argument is true for many foreign events, but not the last 2 cups we were taking about.
So when a Terran isn't in the finals of the last two cups with good Terrans, there's suddenly a huge problem and we need to cry IMBA IMBA IMBA? >.>
Terran has the least premier tournament wins and final appearances of all 3 races this year. And if you insist that neither Terran is weaker than the other races, nor does the map pool have anything to do with it, I call worst bracket luck for Terran.
Fitting that the only Terran to reach the GSL semis would be MMA in that case.
Since when is the number of premier tournaments wins a relevant metric to measure balance?
Well, since a very long time. If you take only in consideration Korean Premier Tournament, the numbers of wins per race are highly correlated to each period of dominance of each race. Foreign events are often affected by imbalanced line-ups.
The current figures are 2 wins for T, 5 for Z and 6 for P. Guess what? By changing the outcome of only one game per finals, we could have 3T, 3Z, 7P, or 3T, 4Z, 6P.
I don't get your point at all ? By shifting arbitrary the results by 1/5 (or 1/7), which is HUGE (more than accepted imbalance effects in most case), you get 3T wins vs 6P wins instead of 3T wins for 7P wins, so you take the ration from 3/7 = 0.42 to 3/6 = 0.5. Guess what ? You shifted 20%, witch is exactly 1/5. So by shifting the results by 1/5 you..... shift the result by 1/5. That's exactly like saying changing only one map in a BO1 (i.e 100% shift) change the match by 100%, LOL. Magic, as you said.
If you want to do maths, we can do so. So, assuming we got a balanced game and a balanced line-up of players per race (ie the distribution of skill among players of race X are the same as race Y, etc. ), we should got 1 chance of 3 for a given race to win a tournament. In this condition, the probability of wining 7 consecutive premier tournament by protoss is 1 on 2187 ( 3^7 ). But you will argue everything is fine and balanced, i guess. Bracket luck, i guess. Btw that was done by 6 distinct protoss, so it's somewhat difficult to argue these 6 players are way ahead others in skill... (it's a receivable argument when only one player wins everything )
Meanwhile, the other usually used indicators of balance (number of TvT/ZvZ/PvP and number of Terrans in the Ro32 of Korean tournaments) are fine.
Well if you watch the Ro4 or Ro8 of these tournaments, it's not fine at all. Balance are related to skill level. For example before Ro32, TvP is kinda fine, because protoss early BS and late-game strength are balanced by mine drops and bio-drop play mid-game. Then if you watch the best PvTers, i.e Parting, he wins 87% of his game and 97% of his matchs since January 1st.
The new map pool is new, but they retired relatively good terran maps for totally awful terran maps. Guess what, terrans will suck and zerg will do fine, while protosses will stay strong. They done this change while terran was already underperforming for half a year. Very hard to understand, i guess ?
On July 18 2015 16:11 Samx wrote: Take nothing away from curious. But dreamhack isn't what it used to be with the line-up. Great to see curious finally win something.
Dreamhack rarely ever has a very stacked line-up, pretty much only just before Blizzcon and Koreans need the WCS points to make the cut.
Thanks for this warmhearted recap and tribute to Curious. I feel really happy to see him finally win a bigger tournament. I was here, when Maru played his first GSL, saw Fruitdealer, Nestea and the likes and noticed Curious with his Code A win in 2011 - a tournment where he dropped only one single map (in the preliminaries, funnily against Maru). Of course one could argue, that his Code S semifinals run last season was much harder, but he did this already in 2013 AND it didnt win him a championship! But now... :-) :-)
Ok guys, so I'm going to do a little wrap up from my experience at DH Valencia '15. Thankfully this was the second time I managed to attend, so I can also rumble a bit about the differences between last and this year's experience, which basically is the inclusion of CS:GO in the main circuit.
Starcraft 2
You know, I don't like Patience. It's nothing personal, he seems like an ok guy. Young, polite and clearly with potential. However, he (1) plays protoss, (2) has no korean nor international achievement for which we can draw a storyline about him, and more importantly (3) he plays protoss, which in itself means your soul is corrupted, dark and hopeless. However, I was rooting for him sooo much in the semifinals! Man, I couldn't believe we would have a ZvZ so I was rooting for whoever could prevent that from happening. It was like the worst prospect ever, even if we were having gimmicky and genuinely fun players to watch like TRUE or Curious... But then ZvZ happened and the finals were actually a lot of fun! The main stage was not packed for the finals, but almost, and I had the feeling that people gathered together as the series went on because Curious and TRUE made it so entertaining. I saw people watching at first like 'so many aliens spitting that green acid, omg I don't know what is going on', which went full passion clapping and cheering for every move (especially in the Bridgehead game, which was a super fun game). Then I saw that the viewing was very low, probably because of the timing, but I can assure you that the event attracted a lot of people, and that the production was wonderful. And SC2-wise, it was an above average tournament. I can't really say why, but last year the only thing that made the crowd cheer was watching Majestic and Vortix do well, but this time it has been more of a well-rounded tournament with entertaining games and one foreigner dropping out to the eventual champion.
You know, the casters desk was about 10 meters away from the main stage, and they were a little bit isolated form the crowd. It was awesome to see Wax leave their desk right when Curious won and clap hard, he was probably one of the very few there who understood what it meant that Startale.Curious, the Gatekeeper, would finally win a (mid/top-tier) tournament. I think it was a great moment, I wish someone had caught that moment on camera because it was awesome to see the expert (no quotes here) being excited about a tournament winner.
And as for the casting, I think it was great. I would have liked Nathanias to step in and cast some terran games, but still the trio Moonglade-Valdes-Tod was exceptional. I guess everyone may agree now that Valdes has become a solid play-by-play commentator, with fair game knowledge as well. As for the rest, Moonglade and Tod are awesome and always deliver.
DH'15
You know, I think DH made the right move. Last year there was a dedicated stage only for SC2, and while I would say it was a success in terms of audience and show, there were too many games played from the "Arena" (that area with many computers lined up for playing group stages or early bracket matches) that gathered 10-20 people. Man, even a hardcore SC2 follower like me got bored at some poing. But this time, with Heroes, SC2 and CS:GO sharing a main stage, it meant all the three games shared the best resources, a kind of pompous stage which really felt like something bit. This didn't happen last year. And will this meant that SC2 got moved to Friday and did not have the spotlight on Saturday, what I saw was a very healthy audience watching, cheering and getting excited. Plus, the CS:GO finals were great as well, and that game really has something, it's easy to understand (that was my first time watching CS:GO) and produces nail-biting moments all the time. Personally, I think SC2 is miles ahead in terms of spectating experience, but still pretty good. I don't like MOBAs so can't comment on the Heroes tournament.
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CKJyy_VUMAAQkRV.jpg)
