EPTSC2's shrinking talent pool: stuchiu on ESPN - Page 3
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Nakajin
Canada8989 Posts
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Hotshot
Canada184 Posts
On January 21 2016 06:26 Brutaxilos wrote: Maybe it's time to make multiplayer completely free for everyone. It's not like there are very many people left who would only buy LotV for the multiplayer and have not bought it yet. I still play WoL only because that is the only game I have. If lotv multiplayer was free, I would be playing that game, and I am sure so would many others. (Edit: That being said, Wol does not have widdow mines, lurkers, oracles, SH, adept, liberator, etc... So I think it's more of a relaxing game to play) The competition is weird in WoL, ill go from playing an opponent who is about as good as me or better (I am top 8 diamond) to playing someone who does the weirdest things that would never work. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16976 Posts
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sagi
Finland346 Posts
KeSPA draft numbers by year: + Show Spoiler + 2005: 44 2006: 72 2007: 81 2008: 82 2009: 56 2010: 48 2011: 39 2012: 9 2013: 6 To my knowledge there hasn't been official draft after this one, although I've heard talks about them (like some boss saying rookie leagues are incoming in an interview after the PL finals). From 2014 to present, there are less than 5 new players in KeSPA teams and many of those 2012 and 2013 recruits have quit the game. The retirement number given in the article from 2007 on is propably accurate as I have 78 in my document (13 retirements in 2012; 34 in 2013; 19 in 2014; 25 in 2015. Current proleague player pool by birth year: + Show Spoiler + 1988: 3 (these fellows are hitting the army deadline soon) 1990: 1 1991: 3 1992: 12 1993: 4 1994: 12 1995: 10 1996: 8 1997: 4 Unknown: 2 (SpeeD and NaTuRal) Total: 56 in 7 teams. Players in foreign teams by birth year: + Show Spoiler + 1988: 2 1990: 5 1991: 2 1992: 2 1993: 1 1994: 0 1995: 3 1996: 1 Total: 16 (there's propably 5 ot so more I'm no tracking as theres little results) These players are older than the ones in proleague. Most will likely retire during the next few years. Teamless players by birth year: + Show Spoiler + 1982: NesTea 1987: 1 1988: 2 1989: 1 1990: 4 1991: 3 1992: 7 1993: 1 1994: 4 1995: 3 1996: 1 Total: 28 (these are players considered active and or that have played in past years and haven't announced retirement yet) So the total is about 100 players of which those playing in Korean teams is something like 65 (assuming there will be 8th team to replace Prime and SBENU doesn't go down). Annual loss of player capita is 20 at best, even though I predict retirements to increase as the big BW generations retire during the ongoing second half of the decade. The scene will survive 2016, but it might not survive 2017 or 2018. What's the plan when those 30+ 1992-1994 born start to go to the military? | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16976 Posts
On January 21 2016 07:46 sagi wrote: The numbers are indeed quite sad. These might be a bit off, but the trends are clearly there. i don't think things are "quite sad". looking closely at my graph the current interest level in January 2016 is about 40% of what it was in March of 2011. its declining slowly. just have fun and play and watch the game. | ||
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FFGenerations
7088 Posts
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FrostedMiniWheats
United States30730 Posts
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NonY
8751 Posts
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coolman123123
146 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On January 21 2016 07:07 FuzzyJAM wrote: But SC2 has been "dying" since release. Of course, the boy who cried wolf did eventually meet a wolf. Besides the BW purists who never liked SC2, it took a couple of years for people to seriously concern themselves with SC2's fate. If memory serves, the beginning of SC2's stagnation in terms of numbers more or less coincided with MOBAs rising to the top. Now more than ever, it feels justified to be concerned with SC2's fate. You can count on one hand the number of months that passed since the release of LotV, and on an average day, SC2 has a third of the viewers of Black Ops3, Darkest Dungeon or Diablo 3 (new season, but it's not not even a spectator game). It has fewer viewers than FIFA16, Blade and Soul, Runescape, and "Creative" - videos of random folks drawing and making stuff. And while all of these things may seem to you like mockery, attacks on the game that you like - rest assured that your game will always have at least a niche of players. But those of us, the less avid fans but the fans nonetheless who like a thriving, high level spectator sport with highlights and fun games and "storylines", 2016 and 2017 seem like a rough patch. I used to be a huge fan of BW, back in the OSL and MSL days - I would wake up at 4AM to watch the finals, I would jump on my chair in excitement. BW is not dead, but it's no where near as dynamic and exciting as it was in those days. Not because the game got worse, but because the community got diluted. I don't doubt the honesty and the enthusiasm of the people who are still watching BW, who still feel the excitement that I felt when I watched it. But surely even they understand that the golden era of that game has passed, and it's turning many of us away, at least in the west. I'll give you this: SC2 is not dying, it's invincible. But the magic is dying, the momentum of the game is dying, and the hype is slowly getting relegated to history, along with the greats of this world like CS 1.6, Quake, Warcraft 3, Painkiller - games which still undoubtedly still have some fans and avid watchers, avid players, but that no one cares to sponsors, and no new players care for. And while I salute the optimism of people who laugh at the notion that SC2 may be getting stuck in a downward spiral, I can't help to feel like you're justifying the status quo, perhaps because of a naïve expectation that if you pretend everything is fine, then it will be. And that's doing more harm than good, because if we keep saying "this is fine and this WCS format is fine", then in 2017 Starcraft 2 will slip below Ocarina of Time too, and these types of games which have a cult following but their relevance to gaming is generally understood to be largely historical. But if you still play, and you still insist that the game is not dead because the bytes are still on your hard drive, and you don't concern yourself with the lower level of play and the diminished level of competition, the quiet community and the muffled hype, then we just have different definitions of what constitutes an e-sport. And that's fine - for you. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16976 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:02 Djzapz wrote: I'll give you this: SC2 is not dying, it's invincible. But the magic is dying, the momentum of the game is dying, and the hype is slowly getting relegated to history, along with the greats of this world like CS 1.6, Quake, Warcraft 3, Painkiller - games which still undoubtedly still have some fans and avid watchers, avid players, but that no one cares to sponsors, and no new players care for. NHL '94 and Tecmo Bowl Football are still magic and still attract new players. You don't know what direction the game will take deep into its old age. | ||
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sharkie
Austria18512 Posts
Shouldn't mainstream media articles be written with more details? | ||
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Cele
Germany4016 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:02 Djzapz wrote: But surely even they understand that the golden era of that game has passed, and it's turning many of us away, at least in the west. as a fan who still follows BW and jumps in his chair when  Bisu faces  EffOrt in the current Starleague Finals, let me say yes i do get what you mean. Then it's a matter of perspective. The games we see today are not, or not a lot worse quality then let's say 07-08. Of course a big chunk of notable names are missing, but the magic still works for me.Then you can argue, that the games itself are still fine, but that the whole scene is much smaller, that we have no more Pro Teams and no BW on korean Televison. That's true, but is the important point for me that "my game" is Esport #1 ? Personally i'd say no. The only thing that has drastically changed is the foreigner scene really, which is not up to where it once was. But yeah i can understand your sentiment. | ||
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FuzzyJAM
Scotland9300 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:02 Djzapz wrote: Besides the BW purists who never liked SC2, it took a couple of years for people to seriously concern themselves with SC2's fate. If memory serves, the beginning of SC2's stagnation in terms of numbers more or less coincided with MOBAs rising to the top. Now more than ever, it feels justified to be concerned with SC2's fate. Nah. From release, lots of people were pointing to Korean numbers in particular and how awfully it was doing and how nobody showed up to watch games or played it in PC bangs and blahblahblah and saying the game was dead on arrival. Pretty sure there were even TL articles on it as early as 2010. Obviously SC2 is continuing to lose popularity. That was always going to happen, barring something totally unforeseen. In large part, that's just the nature of a continually aging difficult 1v1 game in the current market. But it's still going to be around for the foreseeable future. | ||
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:12 JimmyJRaynor wrote: NHL '94 and Tecmo Bowl Football are still magic and still attract new players. You don't know what direction the game will take deep into its old age. Everything else I said points to the fact that those things are indeed possible but they're not exactly comparable to what the thriving esports are capable of doing. I can still play Chrono Trigger, I still boot up CS 1.6 and play, but it's not the same. And if you enjoy the niche scenes that's fine, I do too, but for me and for many others, you don't beat OSL finals, you don't beat the historic competition and level of dedication that you get during what I called the "golden age" of a game. On January 21 2016 08:30 FuzzyJAM wrote: Nah. From release, lots of people were pointing to Korean numbers in particular and how awfully it was doing and how nobody showed up to watch games or played it in PC bangs and blahblahblah and saying the game was dead on arrival. Pretty sure there were even TL articles on it as early as 2010. Obviously SC2 is continuing to lose popularity. That was always going to happen, barring something totally unforeseen. In large part, that's just the nature of a continually aging difficult 1v1 game in the current market. But it's still going to be around for the foreseeable future. Well, from the start the sales figures looked well. The Korean scene was slow to catch on but it eventually did. I guess the expectations were always too high but the cynicism has been on the rise since the decline is now demonstrably real. | ||
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TJ31
630 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:12 JimmyJRaynor wrote: NHL '94 and Tecmo Bowl Football are still magic and still attract new players. You don't know what direction the game will take deep into its old age. Some older games do attract new players, even these days, even take some consoles series as Final Fantasy maybe. I alway see some new players asking some questions and looking for tactics for those, even though games are over 15-20 years old sometimes. But that's a small minority, it's not enough to make those games "popular" again as they were when they just got released. And it's the same for SC2, even worse actually, because expansions weren't been able to keep interest alive for too long, especially LoTV. And with nothing on the horizon to make a lot of new players interested, it'll keep declining. Blizzard is a big company and WoW still provides decent income, along with HS, to keep the scene alive somehow, as they do for Heroes of the Storm which never was and never will be popular, compared to LoL and Dota 2. But in my opinion that's pretty sad existence, not much better than "ghetto" BW streams on afreeca compared to how great and big BW was in Korea before. | ||
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alexanderzero
United States659 Posts
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geokilla
Canada8244 Posts
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Djzapz
Canada10681 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:21 Cele wrote: as a fan who still follows BW and jumps in his chair when Bisu faces EffOrt in the current Starleague Finals, let me say yes i do get what you mean. Then it's a matter of perspective. The games we see today are not, or not a lot worse quality then let's say 07-08. Of course a big chunk of notable names are missing, but the magic still works for me.Then you can argue, that the games itself are still fine, but that the whole scene is much smaller, that we have no more Pro Teams and no BW on korean Televison. That's true, but is the important point for me that "my game" is Esport #1 ? Personally i'd say no. The only thing that has drastically changed is the foreigner scene really, which is not up to where it once was. But yeah i can understand your sentiment. To be honest I could get back into SCBW given some infrastructure. I occasionally turn on streams from TL's streams list. I like that I can open a random game and see amazing stuff. Maginot lines of tanks cutting the map in two, dynamic actions all over the map, rapid expansion... But the streams are laggy, I don't know who's good, I'm not immersed. My friends have moved on to SC2 and have since quit, and good luck convincing them to watch games without english commentary, without clear storylines. It was great being on skype and talking to them about stuff, but now I can't have that. To me, all of those things go against it. It's not about being number 1. I enjoy CSGO even though it's far behind LoL, DOTA2 and Hearthstone. But that's a game which is fun to watch (which I'd argue SC2 is not), it has cool stories, rivalries, the scene is ripe with analysis, I have friends who play CSGO and who know who the players are, the sick plays that have happened. There's a lot to talk about. And that's why BW still works - those people who unlike me still are part of an active community can still make it work, but the appeal is narrower. In no way does this delegitimize the game, though, of course. It's a matter of personal opinion, but one that I strongly believe in, that there is something good and entertaining for the spectator in an effervescent and dynamic, growing competitive game. Pure love of the game is great, but community is not negligible. There are those people who could play chess all day with a couple of friends and be happy, but what if they were in a stadium, with cheering fans who all have a different bias, a different outlook, a different philosophy regarding chess. I think it's great. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 21 2016 08:35 alexanderzero wrote: I've always felt that SC2 will never reach its full potential unless it goes free to play. Being behind a $40 paywall will cause younger gamers to pass it up in a heartbeat, and younger kids are the ones with the time and motivation to get good. Most of the Brood War greats started at a very young age. I don't think that's the problem. I've talked to so many people who all bought the game, who all play some sort of MobA now and it's always the same: The game is too stressful, too hard to learn, too frustrating and doesn't fullfill the expectations of your typical casual player. If you go into a MobA you get what you expect. You kill creeps, you kill heroes, you buy items, you level up and eventually the game concludes. If you go into SC2 you expect big army battles and to run around with units and so on and then you get 4gated 15 times in a row and leave the game forever before you even find out that the reason you don't have units is that you needed to make a special unit that you need to click every 30seconds and the millions of other possibilities to play the game are all noob-traps. | ||
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