On August 28 2016 17:34 dizzy101 wrote: These absolutist, anti-foreigner arguments are so dumb. "I only want to see the best in the world, screw foreigners". As if these people watch every obscure Korean-vs-obscure Korean match. They don't.
Part of the reason the SC2 viewership deflated like a balloon in 2013-14 was that no-name Koreans with zero backstory came to dominate the tournament scene. Fly in, win, take money, go back... and the tournament has no story to tell because nobody's invested.
Also I will ask again. Who exactly are these obscure Koreans you speak of? At this point Korean players are much more well known than foreigner players. I can barely remember who Uthermal is, nor do I know anything about his personality or nationality. If anything, its faceless foreigners like Shadown and Cham who are taking money from Korean players with WCS.
This so much. Uthermal who? Showtime? Besides a couple of big names like Scarlett and Stephano, etc, the majority of famous sc2 progamers that i know and follow are korean.
Just because you don't know the foreign players doesn't mean no one does. Personally, I don't know much about herO or Hero or Parting and Classic or Dark and Rogue. I know the names, but not much else. I know more about Byun because he is the online hero who actually speaks some english and respects the top of the foreign scene. We also hear about him more outside of games like when he posted on a Koeran forum how he barely beat Snute and Nerchio makes him shake. I know about the foreign scene because they're on TL (getting a response from Nerchio or uThermal or Drogo in a live report thread is awesome), Twitter, Reddit, etc. and a bunch of them post plenty and smack talk, complain, compliment each other, help other players out (Harstem was on the Protoss help me thread), feel down and crushed, happy and excited, and any other emotion. It's not that Koreans don't feel any of that, of course they do, but we almost never hear about it. They're not posting in forums in any language, they're not on Twitter, they don't stream, and they largely just practice in the team house and disappear except for events.
Funny you say that because there's some nuance in there which I agree with. The only streamer I would regularly follow is forgg's stream before he had to go back to the military.
Today the only alternative is nathanias (for me personally), which to be fair is a pretty damn good replacement.
Otherwise though I do admit that following the foreigner scene is something I used to do. In fact this was during the time where SSL didn't exist for SC2, neither did Proleague and GSL was behind a paywall. I didn't care much for the Korean scene back then. The foreign scene back then was a lot of fun though, especially with Idra around, I had a blast cheering for him. MLGs were super fun to watch, especially the ones with Boxer. MLGs were a blast to watch. One of the reasons I liked Idra was because he also streamed and that was a very fun stream to watch.
Today though it's funnily enough the other way around. There aren't a lot of player streaming at a very high level (ForGG being the highest level possible for Terran, Nathanias is just fun to listen to), but the Korean scene is very vibrant these days (unfortunately the number of seasons is lower), especially PL. It's all free too. I've completely stopped watching Dreamhack, apparently there was also an event at Montreal recently which was annoying because it meant Tasteless wasn't there to cast the ASL, which is also by the way a huge amount of fun.
People watch tournaments for different reasons, as a casual player and viewer, I'm not going to bother watching lower league tournaments, I'm going to watch the best players play in the most stacked possible tournaments and see games go down to the edge of a knife. I might watch a weekend event but I don't care if Neeb, Bly or Thermal wins anything because they aren't doing it where all the big fish are.
You can't say I'm wrong or right, the reason why people watch SC at all is pretty personal.
Edit: For the record, I'm also a part of the Aoe3 community and I've got buckets of friends there who also watch starcraft. There isn't a single one who likes the anti-Korea region lock either. Maybe it's because we're all die hard RTS fans or something
On August 29 2016 05:23 207aicila wrote: Fayth's posts in this thread are both hilarious and pathetic. I hope whoever lifted his ban is happy with himself.
Fayth's post contain some truth/some patheticness.
Like he is truth in saying that SC2 is dying (and it is downsized with a division by 8 from its peak and at its peak isn't even THAT strong, like BW still had millions of viewership while SC2 was playing around the 100,000 to 500,000 viewer range).
But he is pathetic in saying that foreigners on average can actually catch up to Korean player, the chance of that happening is like less than 2%.
So MANY chances have to happen: 1. like Korean players aren't losing skills, its just matter of skills. Korean players just know far more moves ahead of you and move their hand faster than you.
2. You need to learn Korean and move their, there are only maybe less than 100 people in the world that want to do that, they are the people that are currently the top 100 foreigners.
Well how many of them are learning Korean from scratch?
0.
3. Who will sponsor you? Look we had the most money in SC2 when viewership was at the highest viewership. Sponsors just see SC2 as a sinking ship at the moment. Unless there are some nice fan willing to sponsor their player to live in Korea with actually cash.
Are fans doing that? No they are not.
In conclusion: By math, thinking that foreigners have great hope in catching up is very pathetic.
I feel like it's disappointing that the WCS global events never really materialized even though Blizzard left them open as a possibility. On top of this, the weekend tournaments (IEMs and Dreamhacks) replaced the regular WCS leagues in America and Europe and became region locked.
Ideally, the regular global WCS leagues should've been heavily region-locked from the start. As a compromise, only half the weekend events should be region-locked while the other half should be open to Koreans. The current iteration of WCS went way too far into the region-locked direction without giving much compensation to the Korean scene, and this could damage an already precarious scene.
On August 29 2016 05:59 ROOTFayth wrote: also the chances of a foreigner catching up to a korean is 50%, either they catch up or they dont
Welp, you sound like the guy who tells some afraid patience of a more easy to heal variant of cancer (95% healing chance) "Dont worry, the chance of dying is 50%, either you do or you dont"...
I think it's unlikely foreigners will ever overcome Korea's reign completely. At the very best, I think we could see a few foreigners start taking games off of a big name occasionally, and placing top 8 against Koreans. But Scarlett and Neeb are both really solid foreigners right now, even against Koreans. Are they top-tier? Naw... But they are getting up there.
It's not impossible for a foreigner to be considered "one of the best in the world", but foreigners have a much harder time without the Korean infrastructure. And that is the primary reason there is a region lock.
@Above It is impossible to attribute a percent chance to a situation happening like that. There is no way to actually determine the probability... It's just your estimation, and since the scenario will only ever happen once, you will have no way of ever knowing whether your estimation was accurate to begin with.
On August 28 2016 17:34 dizzy101 wrote: These absolutist, anti-foreigner arguments are so dumb. "I only want to see the best in the world, screw foreigners". As if these people watch every obscure Korean-vs-obscure Korean match. They don't.
Part of the reason the SC2 viewership deflated like a balloon in 2013-14 was that no-name Koreans with zero backstory came to dominate the tournament scene. Fly in, win, take money, go back... and the tournament has no story to tell because nobody's invested.
Also I will ask again. Who exactly are these obscure Koreans you speak of? At this point Korean players are much more well known than foreigner players. I can barely remember who Uthermal is, nor do I know anything about his personality or nationality. If anything, its faceless foreigners like Shadown and Cham who are taking money from Korean players with WCS.
This so much. Uthermal who? Showtime? Besides a couple of big names like Scarlett and Stephano, etc, the majority of famous sc2 progamers that i know and follow are korean.
Just because you don't know the foreign players doesn't mean no one does. Personally, I don't know much about herO or Hero or Parting and Classic or Dark and Rogue. I know the names, but not much else. I know more about Byun because he is the online hero who actually speaks some english and respects the top of the foreign scene. We also hear about him more outside of games like when he posted on a Koeran forum how he barely beat Snute and Nerchio makes him shake. I know about the foreign scene because they're on TL (getting a response from Nerchio or uThermal or Drogo in a live report thread is awesome), Twitter, Reddit, etc. and a bunch of them post plenty and smack talk, complain, compliment each other, help other players out (Harstem was on the Protoss help me thread), feel down and crushed, happy and excited, and any other emotion. It's not that Koreans don't feel any of that, of course they do, but we almost never hear about it. They're not posting in forums in any language, they're not on Twitter, they don't stream, and they largely just practice in the team house and disappear except for events.
Almost no pro is actively on TL and since there is almost no stream anymore you can't really follow pros. Where do you see foreign pros happy or excited on TL? Maybe their twitter but most foreign winners don't show more emotions on the stream when winning than Koreans. Plus the only foreigner close to the likes of MC on stream was maybe Stephano ? Yet he didn't steal the show as much at all.
The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
uThermal: TRUE won a single elimination tournament, beating two players who were top eight in WCS points. And I won a single elimination tournament beating four players who were in the top eight. His format wasn’t harder, it wasn’t a harder tournament. But his just happened to have more points points and money. I think I actually won a harder tournament than TRUE did, but he just got lucky and won the right tournament.
uThermal: TRUE won a single elimination tournament, beating two players who were top eight in WCS points. And I won a single elimination tournament beating four players who were in the top eight. His format wasn’t harder, it wasn’t a harder tournament. But his just happened to have more points points and money. I think I actually won a harder tournament than TRUE did, but he just got lucky and won the right tournament.
Polt/Snute are top 5, Harstem is top 10, Welmu/HeRoMaRinE are like top 20 Snute/Neeb are top 5, viOLet/Elazer are top 10
I'd say they're about as impressive tbf. Neeb's PvT is probably better than Polt's TvZ, so you could argue for uThermal's being better, but they're at least even.
On August 29 2016 08:42 sd_andeh wrote: The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
Koreans are not banned. They just have to reside in the appropriate region to compete in WCS.
The problem with saying "just get better" it's like saying to an athlete "just get better." But the Koreans have a system in place where Koreans have the opportunity to join teams and benefit from infrastructure. Foreigners do not have this opportunity.
Since 2012-2015, Koreans have dominated almost all tournaments because of their skill, hard work, and benefiting from the Korean infrastructure like coaches and teamhouses. Koreans have not won just because they work harder and have more skill, but because they have this third element.
So because they have dominated, foreigners have not been able acquire as much prize as they might have if tournaments were region locked. And I think (though this could be wrong) that this has contributed to a decline in relative skill of foreigners to Koreans. Because they are beaten in the Ro16 and the Ro32, they can't really make much of a living without teams or sponsors. (And even then motivation can be a problem).
So yes, you could say that Koreans are punished by somewhat limiting their ability to compete in other tournaments, but I would say that this is a sort of necessary evil to raise the level of the foreign scene. Besides, it's not like GSL and SSL made their qualifiers online.
So I would ask you, how would you, as Blizzard, raise the foreign scene talent?
I feel the best way to close the gap would be to make ladder just one big server and throw the whole world in with some sort of middle ground latency, koreans would probably stay better overall because of team houses,coaches and more higher % of players coming from korea.
On August 29 2016 08:42 sd_andeh wrote: The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
Koreans are not banned. They just have to reside in the appropriate region to compete in WCS.
The problem with saying "just get better" it's like saying to an athlete "just get better." But the Koreans have a system in place where Koreans have the opportunity to join teams and benefit from infrastructure. Foreigners do not have this opportunity.
Since 2012-2015, Koreans have dominated almost all tournaments because of their skill, hard work, and benefiting from the Korean infrastructure like coaches and teamhouses. Koreans have not won just because they work harder and have more skill, but because they have this third element.
So because they have dominated, foreigners have not been able acquire as much prize as they might have if tournaments were region locked. And I think (though this could be wrong) that this has contributed to a decline in relative skill of foreigners to Koreans. Because they are beaten in the Ro16 and the Ro32, they can't really make much of a living without teams or sponsors. (And even then motivation can be a problem).
So yes, you could say that Koreans are punished by somewhat limiting their ability to compete in other tournaments, but I would say that this is a sort of necessary evil to raise the level of the foreign scene. Besides, it's not like GSL and SSL made their qualifiers online.
So I would ask you, how would you, as Blizzard, raise the foreign scene talent?
I wouldn't. Like I said earlier, if you were losing to Koreans in the Ro32 before the Region Lock, that's probably the level you belong at anyway
On August 29 2016 08:42 sd_andeh wrote: The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
Koreans are not banned. They just have to reside in the appropriate region to compete in WCS.
The problem with saying "just get better" it's like saying to an athlete "just get better." But the Koreans have a system in place where Koreans have the opportunity to join teams and benefit from infrastructure. Foreigners do not have this opportunity.
Since 2012-2015, Koreans have dominated almost all tournaments because of their skill, hard work, and benefiting from the Korean infrastructure like coaches and teamhouses. Koreans have not won just because they work harder and have more skill, but because they have this third element.
So because they have dominated, foreigners have not been able acquire as much prize as they might have if tournaments were region locked. And I think (though this could be wrong) that this has contributed to a decline in relative skill of foreigners to Koreans. Because they are beaten in the Ro16 and the Ro32, they can't really make much of a living without teams or sponsors. (And even then motivation can be a problem).
So yes, you could say that Koreans are punished by somewhat limiting their ability to compete in other tournaments, but I would say that this is a sort of necessary evil to raise the level of the foreign scene. Besides, it's not like GSL and SSL made their qualifiers online.
So I would ask you, how would you, as Blizzard, raise the foreign scene talent?
I wouldn't. Like I said earlier, if you were losing to Koreans in the Ro32 before the Region Lock, that's probably the level you belong at anyway
On August 29 2016 08:42 sd_andeh wrote: The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
Koreans are not banned. They just have to reside in the appropriate region to compete in WCS.
The problem with saying "just get better" it's like saying to an athlete "just get better." But the Koreans have a system in place where Koreans have the opportunity to join teams and benefit from infrastructure. Foreigners do not have this opportunity.
Since 2012-2015, Koreans have dominated almost all tournaments because of their skill, hard work, and benefiting from the Korean infrastructure like coaches and teamhouses. Koreans have not won just because they work harder and have more skill, but because they have this third element.
So because they have dominated, foreigners have not been able acquire as much prize as they might have if tournaments were region locked. And I think (though this could be wrong) that this has contributed to a decline in relative skill of foreigners to Koreans. Because they are beaten in the Ro16 and the Ro32, they can't really make much of a living without teams or sponsors. (And even then motivation can be a problem).
So yes, you could say that Koreans are punished by somewhat limiting their ability to compete in other tournaments, but I would say that this is a sort of necessary evil to raise the level of the foreign scene. Besides, it's not like GSL and SSL made their qualifiers online.
So I would ask you, how would you, as Blizzard, raise the foreign scene talent?
Nobody has ever said that foreign teams are not allowed to get coaches/teamhouses. If you think about it, the conditions really are the same. There's absolutely nothing that Koreans do that foreigners can't do if they want to.
Oh and about Koreans not being banned - if you live close to Korea you're still allowed to play. The region lock is only for koreans, which is plain stupid and quite racist. And when Koreans found a way to get around the system (by moving to EU/US) they made the restrictions even harder, forcing koreans out of the regions. Only a very select few are allowed to play outside of Korea which is just dumb.
Think of it like this; a practice partner in Korea, or someone just outside the A-team so to speak, may be much better than most foreigners but has no opportunity to play in proleague and a part from that there's only GSL and SSL. Blizzard's restrictions effectively kills such players careers as there is no way for them to profit, even though they are extremely skilled at the game.
Besides, I'm pretty sure most of us enjoyed the old IEMs / MLGs / Dreamhacks where loads of Koreans showed up and made for epic tournaments. Foreign tournaments right now are just meh, not really fun to watch, and is only basically charity to foreign players so they can make good money playing the game. I much prefered watching the Koreans and the occasional very skilled foreigner (NaNiwa, Stephano, Scarlett for example) actually beating the Koreans. That was some hyped shit. Foreign tournaments nowadays is just meh and hardly anyone watches them. The little king of the hill tournament that Totalbiscuit organized got way higher viewership than foreign WCS tournaments. Go figure.
On August 29 2016 08:42 sd_andeh wrote: The racism towards Koreans only because they're better. Man up and practice more so you become a better player, don't look for charity from Blizzard.
I like uThermal and I think he's a very cool terran to watch, but what this entire thing is essentially a punishment towards Koreans for being too good at the game.
Imagine if foreigners were banned from competing in Korea because they were "too good". The whole "korean racism" would blow up completely.
Koreans are not banned. They just have to reside in the appropriate region to compete in WCS.
The problem with saying "just get better" it's like saying to an athlete "just get better." But the Koreans have a system in place where Koreans have the opportunity to join teams and benefit from infrastructure. Foreigners do not have this opportunity.
Since 2012-2015, Koreans have dominated almost all tournaments because of their skill, hard work, and benefiting from the Korean infrastructure like coaches and teamhouses. Koreans have not won just because they work harder and have more skill, but because they have this third element.
So because they have dominated, foreigners have not been able acquire as much prize as they might have if tournaments were region locked. And I think (though this could be wrong) that this has contributed to a decline in relative skill of foreigners to Koreans. Because they are beaten in the Ro16 and the Ro32, they can't really make much of a living without teams or sponsors. (And even then motivation can be a problem).
So yes, you could say that Koreans are punished by somewhat limiting their ability to compete in other tournaments, but I would say that this is a sort of necessary evil to raise the level of the foreign scene. Besides, it's not like GSL and SSL made their qualifiers online.
So I would ask you, how would you, as Blizzard, raise the foreign scene talent?
I wouldn't. Like I said earlier, if you were losing to Koreans in the Ro32 before the Region Lock, that's probably the level you belong at anyway
Even if you faced PartinG in a Dreamhack?
So the fact that PartinG was a better player than uThermal at the time made PartinG less worthy of winning the game? PartinG was the better player and hence he advanced. If uThermal wanted to have a shot at beating PartinG, he'd have to practice more or more effectively. There are foreigners that have beaten PartinG on several occasions. uThermal was not one of them because he was not good enough at the game.
Needless to say this whole foreign charity thing triggers me, and I feel sorry for the Koreans that are forced to accept the racism coming out of Blizzard, or quit the game.
EPT
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