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Surely everyone here knows that foreign SC2 is not in good shape. The days of foreigners, or even the single best foreigner, being able to compete regularly with Koreans are long gone; these days, the world outside of Korea is lucky to get a single representative at Blizzcon, with a points format tilted towards the foreign weekend tournaments that are supposed to favor them. Of course, everyone has an opinion on how to fix this.
The magic word for many seems to be "infrastructure". And it's true - even if it isn't what it used to be, the top SC2 teams in Korea have a potent infrastructure for maximizing success. Teamhouses, coaches, and practice partners, all based in Seoul, not to mention long winning traditions. By contrast, foreign teams often seem like little more than loose collections of friends, or players that share sponsors but little else. The few teamhouses available have results that could be charitably called "mixed", and coaches seem practically unknown. The difference in infrastructure is clear, and it's not hard to see how this leads to very different results.
So how does WCS fit into this? Blizzard probably had multiple reasons for creating WCS, including just maintaining high-level SC2 events outside of Korea with the end of MLG, IPL, etc. But a large part of the narrative of the creation of WCS, at least from many community figures, is that it would provide an incentive to grow the foreign scene. With a big-money tournament that was (at least in theory) exclusive to non-Korean players, they would have an incentive and some motivation to practice harder, play better, and get to the level where they could compete with the true best in the world.
So how has that actually worked out? WCS is, essentially, a single-elimination tournament. You keep winning, or you go home and wait a couple months for the next event. This seems to run counter-intuitive to the idea of creating a real impetus for long-term improvement - only the best of the best will actually have a tournament to compete in for most of the year, and the same applies to the big-money prizes that supposedly provide motivation. It also goes against the idea of getting sponsorship, the real fuel for Korean infrastructure. Why pay big bucks to sponsor a team when a few bad results means no one will be seeing your logo anywhere? Also, the short-term nature of WCS encourages the same practices of living apart that are common to foreign SC2 - live at home, fly to the event, and fly back. The same could be said for its individualistic nature.
Let's take a step back and look at Korea - what is and has for a long time the real core of Starcraft in Korea? It's not the GSL, not the SSL, and it wasn't even the OSL or MSL. It's Proleague - the event that lasts for months, provides a reason for players to team up and practice together. It provides weekly exposure for the big Korean companies that fund the whole thing, and weekly games for the top players that compete in it - not to mention opportunites for the underdogs to prove themselves. Although I was not a BW fan, it is difficult to look at the Starcraft infrastructure in Korea and see it as inspired by anything other than Proleague and the OGN and MBC team leagues that preceded it.
There have been foreign team leagues before - IPTL, SC2L, and even the recent Shoutcraft stuff I guess (was that actually a league?) While fun at times, these have had obvious flaws. They were all online, of course, and casted from replays even, which is understandable but limits them in terms of being big events. More importantly, it was obvious that most teams never took them completely seriously - they were secondary events to the big individual events. In order for a hypothetical foreign Proleague to be anything like, well, Proleague, it would need to be the main event, and it would need to be live and in-person.
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So, here's my proposal. Whereas, for the improvement and betterment of non-Korean SC2 players and the community in general, etc etc etc, it should create a foreign version of Proleague in lieu of WCS. It would be held in two specific locations, one in the US and one in Europe. Teams would be based at one or the other and chiefly play within their own region, with perhaps occasional trips to the other region (think something like how interleague baseball used to work, if you know anything about that). After determining one champion in each region, they would meet in a grand final to determine the best foreign SC2 team of all. The beauty of it would be, there wouldn't need to be a region lock - any Korean players that wanted to compete would need to live and play full-time in that region (unless they wanted to commute weekly) and be fully assimilated. Other details about the format could come later, including the funding model - it could be a wide distribution of prize money, or even direct funding to teams more like what Riot does.
Now, obviously, in order to be viable, this would need significant funding from Blizzard, probably a lot more than WCS. No one outside of Blizzard knows exactly how much they care about SC2 continuing on as a viable eSport, or how much money they're willing to spend to make it happen. But if they do care, and they do want it to be viable outside of Korea, I think this is probably the only way. It would provide an incentive for real teams, for training, for the "infrastructure" everyone is talking about. It would draw fans and improve players. It would ensure that top-level professional SC2 is a thing for a long time to come.
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tl;dr kill WCS, make foreign Proleague, SC2 becomes not ded gaem
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1. There is 0% chance of getting all the players to live in one country, let alone one city. The only way this would be remotely possible is if teams paid A LOT of players (far more than currently play full-time) a ridiculous amount of money (far more salary than any foreign progamer is paid right now).
2. Even if this was feasible, or done online, most teams barely even have enough players because foreign SC2 has not developed around team leagues at all.
3. If this happened, foreigners would still get destroyed by top Koreans.
4. Prime could move to America and have a shot at winning! :D
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Blizzard chopped off the head of the foreign community when they didn't region lock WCS season 2. Koreans took over everything.
You don't develop homegrown talent by importing it. You develop it by making it a viable profession and supporting up and coming players. By seconding all the second rate Koreans to Europe and America, it totally washed away the up and coming local scenes, particularly in America.
Imagine if Korea opened up a basketball league intending to build up homegrown talent, but allowed NBA players to make the same salary they do in the States over in Korea. We all know the Korean League would fill up with second rate NBA players and there would be no Koreans in the league.
You build and develop talent by building an infrastructure and investing in players from that region, make it a viable profession, attract good coaches, invest in teams ect... you don't build the region by importing players and then giving them big money.
At this point, it doesn't really matter though because the game isn't as fun as it was. There are a litany of game design mistakes that need to be fixed in order for SC2 to become as fun as it was, and retake the E-Sports throne. But Blizzard with David Kim has no ability to understand even basic game design.
It is really sad. League of Legends game designers do blogs where they explain game design, and if you read them you'll realize how badly SC2 is doing:
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
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I mean the obvious problem is that in Korean, all the players and the games can all be held in and around one city. Its easy for fans to come regularly and its convenient for the player to both play in the games and to practice with their teams when the games are not going on. In the foreign scene this doesn't work that well. America and Europe are gigantic compared to Korea in terms of land mass, and it would be difficult to encourage players to move to around the same city. As such it would be difficult to actually copy the infrastructure and format of proleague as it exists in korea
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make the game good first before talking about these stuff
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Far too expensive for what SC2 is worth, and probably far too difficult mustering the teams. You might not have noticed, but almost ever team has a roster much lower than what is required for a proper teamleague.
Proleague works in Korea because it's progamer density is so ridiculously high and it's a carryover from the Broodwar days. Can't be done outside of there.
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"develop home-grown talent"... there was none to begin with
I have no idea why people dislike it so much that Koreans are good at this game and the rest of the world is not. :/
for sure though, one of the big flaws of the foreign scene is that people don't root for teams, they root for players
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I guess what you could do is create a league in a european city and an american city and somehow make it attractive enough for people serious about their gaming to move there.
In my opinion if a player is unwilling to relocate to pursue a career as a pro he isn't all that serious about it. It's just important that the reward is adequate.
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Back when there still were foreign teams like TL and EG with stars on their roster, I preferred IPTL e.g. even to proleague now. But foreign Sc 2 died a slow death and now when I look at WCS I hardly care for any player. It's probably a mixture of dwindling popularity of the game, lack of support for the foreign scene and a saturation of the market with Korean content. I don't know how you could realistically reverse that trend.
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On October 18 2015 16:15 B.I.G. wrote:
I guess what you could do is create a league in a european city and an american city and somehow make it attractive enough for people serious about their gaming to move there.
In my opinion if a player is unwilling to relocate to pursue a career as a pro he isn't all that serious about it. It's just important that the reward is adequate. That's pretty much exactly what I was trying to say.
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On October 18 2015 16:21 Daswollvieh wrote:
Back when there still were foreign teams like TL and EG with stars on their roster, I preferred IPTL e.g. even to proleague now. But foreign Sc 2 died a slow death and now when I look at WCS I hardly care for any player. It's probably a mixture of dwindling popularity of the game, lack of support for the foreign scene and a saturation of the market with Korean content. I don't know how you could realistically reverse that trend.
welcome to bw. this is the deja vu in terms of you guys going off on wcs and the where's the foreigners whine when it comes to leagues. there were plenty of leagues for them and did that change anything? no.
we can look at all the what ifs however it won't change anything.
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On October 18 2015 16:07 Incognoto wrote:
"develop home-grown talent"... there was none to begin with
I have no idea why people dislike it so much that Koreans are good at this game and the rest of the world is not. :/
for sure though, one of the big flaws of the foreign scene is that people don't root for teams, they root for players
Yeah, sorry, we all forgot that SC2 is a gene in the human genome. How could have been so blind to the fact that at the start of BW and WoL there were foreigners fighting for top spots in leagues? Blind to the fact that they were actually part korean that is! HAH!~!
GOT EM BOYS
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On October 18 2015 15:13 BronzeKnee wrote:Blizzard chopped off the head of the foreign community when they didn't region lock WCS season 2. Koreans took over everything. You don't develop homegrown talent by importing it. You develop it by making it a viable profession and supporting up and coming players. By seconding all the second rate Koreans to Europe and America, it totally washed away the up and coming local scenes, particularly in America. Imagine if Korea opened up a basketball league intending to build up homegrown talent, but allowed NBA players to make the same salary they do in the States over in Korea. We all know the Korean League would fill up with second rate NBA players and there would be no Koreans in the league. You build and develop talent by building an infrastructure and investing in players from that region, make it a viable profession, attract good coaches, invest in teams ect... you don't build the region by importing players and then giving them big money. At this point, it doesn't really matter though because the game isn't as fun as it was. There are a litany of game design mistakes that need to be fixed in order for SC2 to become as fun as it was, and retake the E-Sports throne. But Blizzard with David Kim has no ability to understand even basic game design. It is really sad. League of Legends game designers do blogs where they explain game design, and if you read them you'll realize how badly SC2 is doing: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
That's a good post. There is a reason WCS season 2 was so popular and it only went downhill from there. Sure, the game got a little stale but the main reason was the fact that foreign-only WCS was so much more hype.
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On October 18 2015 16:37 StarStruck wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2015 16:21 Daswollvieh wrote:
Back when there still were foreign teams like TL and EG with stars on their roster, I preferred IPTL e.g. even to proleague now. But foreign Sc 2 died a slow death and now when I look at WCS I hardly care for any player. It's probably a mixture of dwindling popularity of the game, lack of support for the foreign scene and a saturation of the market with Korean content. I don't know how you could realistically reverse that trend. welcome to bw. this is the deja vu in terms of you guys going off on wcs and the where's the foreigners whine when it comes to leagues. there were plenty of leagues for them and did that change anything? no. we can look at all the what ifs however it won't change anything.
I have literally no idea what you are talking about. Who is "you guys", what's the connection to bw?
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Long run tournaments have been never good for foreign players. Team leagues shows the opposite. I am fine with WCS removal and they do ~4x weekends tournaments in EU and 4x in US (Tier1 prizepool) per year. Blizzcon gets own qualifiers. Players need more independences.
Longrun tournaments can have big negative influence to players, when you attend many weekend tournaments.
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I think it is a good idea if it can be implemented somehow. I think people had doubts when they made the first league of starcraft in korea but it came out great ;
At least the fact that foreigners do not have the coaches seems to be a serious handicap.
I love supporting foreigners against koreans but yeah, most of the best games have koreans in them.
I even saw a tournament where two terrans were in the same group: one korean and one non korean.
Non korean lost to the other races and complained live about terran weak race. Korean swept the group.
I love this game and I hope LOTV will revive it and make from it what brood war did for korea.
But I have no faith ! And Blizzard seems to shy away from the company that made the best RTS-s of my life
because they do not make enough money with it. I think they are still pissed off that they could not cache more
from Kespa for Brood war even though Kespa made their game famous, created the amazing legacy that we
have : Boxer, Bisu, Jae Dong , Flash and others and at the same time is in part responsible for the money they
made at the beginning with starcaft 2 . But when money are more important than passion things do not improve.
Sorry for the long post.. I'm venting.
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On October 18 2015 15:13 BronzeKnee wrote:Blizzard chopped off the head of the foreign community when they didn't region lock WCS season 2. Koreans took over everything. You don't develop homegrown talent by importing it. You develop it by making it a viable profession and supporting up and coming players. By seconding all the second rate Koreans to Europe and America, it totally washed away the up and coming local scenes, particularly in America. Imagine if Korea opened up a basketball league intending to build up homegrown talent, but allowed NBA players to make the same salary they do in the States over in Korea. We all know the Korean League would fill up with second rate NBA players and there would be no Koreans in the league. You build and develop talent by building an infrastructure and investing in players from that region, make it a viable profession, attract good coaches, invest in teams ect... you don't build the region by importing players and then giving them big money. At this point, it doesn't really matter though because the game isn't as fun as it was. There are a litany of game design mistakes that need to be fixed in order for SC2 to become as fun as it was, and retake the E-Sports throne. But Blizzard with David Kim has no ability to understand even basic game design. It is really sad. League of Legends game designers do blogs where they explain game design, and if you read them you'll realize how badly SC2 is doing: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417
I never liked the idea of region lock, to be honest. WCS season 3 was region locked, and, sure, as a result there were more foreign players around, but the level of play also took a nosedive. The broadcasting schedule became a lot less intuitive, and because of NASL's bankruptcy Blizzard and ESL were forced to put NASL's casters into the casting lineup as well even though Apollo, Kaelaris and Tod were doing a more than fine enough job on their own. These three elements were the main reasons I basically did not watch any WCS this year, whereas in 2014 I watched almost every game.
I also don't see why Blizzard would have to pay for teams and coaches themselves. Unlike Riot Games, Blizzard's income is not dependent on one single game. World of Warcraft is still lucrative for them (despite the dwindling number of players it is still the most played MMORPG by a large margin); they've got Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and now Overwatch coming up. I would not be surprised if Blizzard will be relieved once LOTV is released because that means that they can finally devote their attention to franchises that actually do have a future.
As much as I like Starcraft 2, 2015 has not been good for it. It's been pushed off the main stage in favour of League of Legends, Dota 2 and Counter Strike for most large events, viewer numbers have dropped significantly and the hype for LOTV seems to be all but nonexistent. On top of that many popular players have retired, are planning to, or try their luck at other games, crowd favourite casters are leaving the scene and are never heard of again (does anyone know what happened to RedEye, TotalBiscuit, Husky, Day9, Gretorp, MrBitter and so on), and foreign teams that were once feared (TeamLiquid, EvilGeniuses) now barely have players in WCS RO32 anymore, and seemingly don't bother with SC2 much anymore to begin with. It's still too early to call starcraft 2 a dead game, but it is clearly no longer a crowd favourite.
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Yeah there's a big issue with foreignland, that is that foreignland is wide and large. But there's one solution : to hell with Foreign ProLeague, let's make a French ProLeague !
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EPT
