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On August 30 2016 06:22 showstealer1829 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2016 06:21 VHbb wrote:On August 30 2016 06:20 showstealer1829 wrote:On August 30 2016 06:05 ROOTFayth wrote:On August 30 2016 04:43 Incognoto wrote:On August 30 2016 03:42 ROOTFayth wrote:On August 30 2016 03:28 HugoBallzak wrote:On August 30 2016 01:59 ROOTFayth wrote:On August 29 2016 23:52 HugoBallzak wrote:
Used to be a uthermal fan by default for being a decent foreigner terran. Not anymore. yeah screw them for not wanting to starve while trying to compete at starcraft right? terrible terrible human beings So the answer to that is take the food out of another player's mouth simply because that player is from a certain country and not just find a new career? nah because that player is getting too fat and other people are starving hence the wcs welfare comments that we're making the problem is that you're blinded (with racist hate?) whereas most people in this thread are just asking for more global, open events. no one is saying there's a problem with regional events, but there's a problem with telling an entire player base to fuck off from EVERY SINGLE international event because "you're too good for us", especially when you then blame it on "practice environments" which funnily enough the likes of polt, hydra, forgg and true are subject to just the same as other foreigners honestly if you're "starving" you should just quit being a "pro" gamer because this isn't cut out for you. or just play part time or something. the scene which is supporting you is the viewers. cutting off all the best players from every single international event is going to alienate a big chunk of those viewers, who are going to stick to either watching only Korea or just stop watching. not really "fine" if anything we'd want a bigger and bigger pie to support bigger and bigger events, but unfortunately that only comes after we get more and more viewers. having some regional events and some international events is a good compromise for most viewers. having only regional events and then only blizzcon as an international event sucks, because there are no OPEN, GLOBAL events, which SUCKS for viewers the scene is atm too small to allow the lesser players to play the game for a living. no sense in protecting them if it means that they drag down the entire scene with them. pretty sure that viewer numbers that starcraft welfare events got this year show that what about the players who were not watching korean stacked tourneys but enjoy foreigners tourney more, according to numbers WCS montreal seemed just fine didn't it? You mean the WCS Montreal that had its peak viewership when 2 "Faceless Koreans" were facing each other? It had its peak during the finals, come on, you can stretch an argument only so far.. So? If the point was that noone wants to see Koreans, the finals would have tanked, instead it had the tournaments highest peak. Don't blame me because the numbers don't shift the argument in your favor
I dont think you can use the viewers argument here. To support one side or the other.
Please understand that I know people assume that viewers are what feeds esports, but its a wrong assumption.
Allow me to explain.
Before we had Esports, we had tournaments and sponsors, they were just smaller, much smaller.
Why? Because the scene was smaller and the interest in games was smaller.
Then comes in Korea. In one country, because it had free starcraft in internet cafes it picks up as a huge thing.
Then, AFTER the popularity of Starcraft is already a huge topic, TV broadcasting stations and KESPA decide to create a show from it.
Then, we got Blizzard and Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 comes out, with huge investment in marketing as the "esports" game and a lot of money is pushed into it and tournaments. That draws peoples attention and we have 8+ million copies of Wings of Liberty sold (dont forget, we already had money tournaments in BETA). Then we got around 5 million copies of HOTS sold... how many did LOTV sell again? I dont actually know, thats why I am asking.
See, in korean broodwar, there was already an interest in it from the population, in SC2, Blizzard decided that they can create that interest.
Now, for those who dont know why that is a flawed approach:
From any intelligent business creation, you first search for an unsatisfied need/want of the population, then create a product to satisfy that need.
You dont create FIRST the product, then tell people why they need it.
Its the same situation here, and because of that, viewer counts do not matter if player base is vanishing (both pro and casual players matter here, not just the people who play in the tournament).
So yes, from the sponsors perspective, they care that viewer counts are huge, but if they have to be "unnaturally boosted", like for example region locking because "people want to see more foreigners in finals of tournaments", then you will have the adverse effect coming and viewer counts will DROP.
What the guys making the decisions are forgetting is that "people want foreigners to do well in tournament finals AGAINST KOREANS", not winning a tournament that has diluted the difficulty.We want to see foreigners overcome their struggles, not removing them all together.
Because then we cheer for the underdog, because then we feel related to the guy who struggles and perhaps can make it happen this time! (etc, etc).
As a final note, please dont forget, the world is not made of rose petals. Its hard in any area. Gaming is not much different.
Being a pro-gamer is not for everyone, and even more considering that sometimes people have taken advantage of players who wanted to go pro.
The way I see it, if you would play this game even if you got paid nothing, then you can risk it. But if you only do it because you get paid, you better be damn good.
Its just one cats Opinion ofc, so dont take it as a grand statement.
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See, in korean broodwar, there was already an interest in it from the population, in SC2, Blizzard decided that they can create that interest.
Now, for those who dont know why that is a flawed approach:
From any intelligent business creation, you first search for an unsatisfied need/want of the population, then create a product to satisfy that need.
You dont create FIRST the product, then tell people why they need it.
Isnt this basically what LoL did? HoN was on the rise but Riot spent fortunes shoehorning in their competitive scene, paying teams to take up LoL squads etc.
Hell look at the corporate world, you dont see a need for a product, you create a need for it.
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On August 30 2016 20:11 NEEDZMOAR wrote:Show nested quote +See, in korean broodwar, there was already an interest in it from the population, in SC2, Blizzard decided that they can create that interest.
Now, for those who dont know why that is a flawed approach:
From any intelligent business creation, you first search for an unsatisfied need/want of the population, then create a product to satisfy that need.
You dont create FIRST the product, then tell people why they need it. Isnt this basically what LoL did? HoN was on the rise but Riot spent fortunes shoehorning in their competitive scene, paying teams to take up LoL squads etc. Hell look at the corporate world, you dont see a need for a product, you create a need for it.
Id say there is a difference between "creating" a need and "identifying" a need. Also dont forget need and want are far different.
LoL came from Dota, Dota came from a UMS that was widely popular before any corporations moved in.
CS was a mod for HF.
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On August 30 2016 11:44 Waxangel wrote:
damn TL, news some other posts already so this gets pushed off the community news list >:D
enjoy these dirty drama page views please
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On August 30 2016 15:09 Topdoller wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2016 06:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
all I know is I was there and the crowd was cheering a LOT MORE when Scarlett was winning games than anybody else, it was not even close, also they weren't faceless koreans, even True who had pretty limited english tried his very best to talk in english during interviews, Polt has been a fan favorite among foreigners for quite a while now... he's part of the foreigners now much more than he is a faceless korean as you would say So is this a " who can speak what language" thing when defining the tag " faceless" ? When Usain Bolt won his 100 & 200 in a Spanish speaking country, a few weeks ago is he defined as "faceless". Does he speak Spanish or Portuguese. It be fascinated to know who many foreigner sc2 pros speak Korean , especially from the NA continent. Are you bi lingual ?
yeah Im bi lingual, and if I had ever planned on competing in SC2 in korea I would definitely have put in hours into learning their language and culture... otherwise how would they accept me?
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On August 30 2016 15:09 Topdoller wrote:
When Usain Bolt won his 100 & 200 in a Spanish speaking country, a few weeks ago is he defined as "faceless".
Technically Brazil's official language is Portuguese. Nothing to do with the current discussion, I just wanted to clarify your example. Please continue debating.
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On August 30 2016 06:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
yeah Im bi lingual, and if I had ever planned on competing in SC2 in korea I would definitely have put in hours into learning their language and culture... otherwise how would they accept me?
Like Idra, Jinro, Scarlett, Neeb, State, and all the other foreigners who've competed there and aren't fluent in Korean lmao what do you even mean
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I've wanted the current WCS format to happen and said it more than once here.
Now that I've seen it in action for almost a year I have to say, it's not something I like.
Here's the deal breaker and why I think Blizzard made it this way and why I think it doesn't work: MONEY.
Simply put, SC2 is way past it's prime as an esport, even though it's probably the most entertaining esport to watch. We went from 100k+ viewers in HotS to... what we have now.
I don't think they made the current WCS system the way it is because they cared that much about the foreign scene. I think they made it because they already moved on from SC2 and were much less invested in the game overall. Much less money were going to go in, much less viewers were expected than ever before, so in a way they're saving face here.
The whole SC2 esports scene was going to shrink a lot in 2016, but if they haven't made WCS the way it is now, the foreign scene right now would be completely dead. Koreans were going to destroy the few remaining decent tourneys and that was going to be it. Starcraft 2 is made after all by Blizzard and not some korean company.
The korean scene isn't dying, it simply has accommodation for less pro players and it is still a lot stronger than the foreign scene.
Ultimately the dev team working on the multiplayer balancing of this game is just not good enough and Blizzard overall doesn't care about the game anymore.
The King of the Hill tournaments by TB have been miles more fun than any Blizz tournament this year. It's because TB has passion for the game and puts effort into creating interesting situations so that new storylines can develop and grow. If Blizzard had the same passion for the game it wouldn't be a dying esport now, it was on the path of major growth in HotS, but it was in the hands of people who didn't care enough.
Blizzard need to get rid of whoever is running business on the esport side of SC2 and invite in people from the community, like TB, who love the game and want it to grow. It wasn't the advent of mobas that ruined SC2 esports, that's just a nice excuse. The game was just terribly mishandled by Blizzard.
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On August 31 2016 16:14 onlyskillmatters wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2016 06:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
yeah Im bi lingual, and if I had ever planned on competing in SC2 in korea I would definitely have put in hours into learning their language and culture... otherwise how would they accept me? Like Idra, Jinro, Scarlett, Neeb, State, and all the other foreigners who've competed there and aren't fluent in Korean lmao what do you even mean
what are you talking about, State has been learning a lot of korean, same for Jinro I think, unsure about the others but yeah... what are you even trying to imply?
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On September 01 2016 02:48 ROOTFayth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 31 2016 16:14 onlyskillmatters wrote:On August 30 2016 06:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
yeah Im bi lingual, and if I had ever planned on competing in SC2 in korea I would definitely have put in hours into learning their language and culture... otherwise how would they accept me? Like Idra, Jinro, Scarlett, Neeb, State, and all the other foreigners who've competed there and aren't fluent in Korean lmao what do you even mean what are you talking about, State has been learning a lot of korean, same for Jinro I think, unsure about the others but yeah... what are you even trying to imply?
Simply untrue.
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On September 01 2016 01:30 Kaewins wrote:
I've wanted the current WCS format to happen and said it more than once here.
Now that I've seen it in action for almost a year I have to say, it's not something I like.
Here's the deal breaker and why I think Blizzard made it this way and why I think it doesn't work: MONEY.
Simply put, SC2 is way past it's prime as an esport, even though it's probably the most entertaining esport to watch. We went from 100k+ viewers in HotS to... what we have now.
I don't think they made the current WCS system the way it is because they cared that much about the foreign scene. I think they made it because they already moved on from SC2 and were much less invested in the game overall. Much less money were going to go in, much less viewers were expected than ever before, so in a way they're saving face here.
The whole SC2 esports scene was going to shrink a lot in 2016, but if they haven't made WCS the way it is now, the foreign scene right now would be completely dead. Koreans were going to destroy the few remaining decent tourneys and that was going to be it. Starcraft 2 is made after all by Blizzard and not some korean company.
The korean scene isn't dying, it simply has accommodation for less pro players and it is still a lot stronger than the foreign scene.
Ultimately the dev team working on the multiplayer balancing of this game is just not good enough and Blizzard overall doesn't care about the game anymore.
The King of the Hill tournaments by TB have been miles more fun than any Blizz tournament this year. It's because TB has passion for the game and puts effort into creating interesting situations so that new storylines can develop and grow. If Blizzard had the same passion for the game it wouldn't be a dying esport now, it was on the path of major growth in HotS, but it was in the hands of people who didn't care enough.
Blizzard need to get rid of whoever is running business on the esport side of SC2 and invite in people from the community, like TB, who love the game and want it to grow. It wasn't the advent of mobas that ruined SC2 esports, that's just a nice excuse. The game was just terribly mishandled by Blizzard.
Blizzard is saving face on SC2 by investing the same or more money this year than last and by continuing to add campaign dlc along with coop dlc. How does that make sense? If they were phasing SC2 out, wouldn't it make sense for them to decrease their prize money spent or to reduce the effort on the game?
It is possible that they will slowly phase it out or are already doing it, but I don't really see any evidence currently of that happening. Also, check with aligulac, but the prize money for this year is around $2.8 million, and last year, it was $2.6 million.
As for balance, it's really your opinion versus anyone else's about whether the game is balanced or not. Some people say yes, and some people say no.
It is true that TB's koth format was more popular, but that was in part due to the fact that it is a novelty format. If blizzard held weekly koths, then it wouldn't be so new. Also, people do want to see the Korean vs foreigner story line.
Also, I want to know if the foreign scene is truly that much weaker than the Korean scene. Neeb just went 2-0 against True yesterday, and while that may not mean much, if the foreign scene was "way below" the Korean, then True should have beaten him. Also, Neeb just won A recent Olimoleague in which he had to face ryung, reality, and gumiho.
If that's not enough, look at the corsair cup results. Guru and Elazer, two of the better European zergs (but certainly not the best) consistently win against Code S level players.
It's one thing when the top foreigners are winning versus some upper/high level Koreans, but it's even more significant when the foreigners who aren't at the top are still going toe to toe with Code S level Koreans.
And as for mobas, well I can't say for certain if they influenced Starcraft's decline; but it is a fact that it became more popular during the time that Starcraft lost popularity. Obviously correlation does not equal causation, but they are both in the RTS genre, and so it makes sense that as Starcraft lost popularity and also lost its foreign scene that LoL and Dota; which retained their scene, continued to grow.
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I agree with everything uThermal said there. Great interview!
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[B]what are you talking about, State has been learning a lot of korean, same for Jinro I think, unsure about the others but yeah... what are you even trying to imply?
Never seen a foreigner player who has stayed in Korea ever interview in Korean even if they were on Korean teams and for you to suggest otherwise is weird. I mean Neeb gets respect from Koreans because he can play relatively well not because he can speak Korean. The MMA's, MC's, Masa's, Polt's, Byun's, Hydra's, ForGG's aren't respected because they have decent english it's because they're actually good at the game.
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On September 01 2016 09:13 onlyskillmatters wrote:Show nested quote +[B]what are you talking about, State has been learning a lot of korean, same for Jinro I think, unsure about the others but yeah... what are you even trying to imply? Never seen a foreigner player who has stayed in Korea ever interview in Korean even if they were on Korean teams and for you to suggest otherwise is weird. I mean Neeb gets respect from Koreans because he can play relatively well not because he can speak Korean. The MMA's, MC's, Masa's, Polt's, Byun's, Hydra's, ForGG's aren't respected because they have decent english it's because they're actually good at the game.
It's because we actually hear about them and they try to be a part of the community. There are plenty of Korean players better than them in all sorts of different periods that got far less attention and were much less memorable than these guys (btw, I wouldn't include Masa. He's foreign and lived in Canada basically all his life.) Of course, just knowing english isn't the reason, but they are good while learning and they get a lot more hype and exposure from our scene.
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The SCII scene is already very niche and, as such, it's really tough to argue that suppressing its largest source of talent is good for the game. Certain (vocal) foreigners can now play the game and rely on tournaments as significant sources of income, sure. But the quality of the games in the WCS Circuit pale in comparison to those in GSL, SSL, etc. At the very least, add 1-2 offline tournaments with both Korean and foreigners competing (perhaps for some kind of blizzcon wildcard spot?).
Given the current setup, someone like Byun or sOs might not qualify for Blizzcon.. it would be a shame to see either miss out while mid-tier players like Elazer and Hydra qualify...
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[B]
It's because we actually hear about them and they try to be a part of the community. There are plenty of Korean players better than them in all sorts of different periods that got far less attention and were much less memorable than these guys (btw, I wouldn't include Masa. He's foreign and lived in Canada basically all his life.) Of course, just knowing english isn't the reason, but they are good while learning and they get a lot more hype and exposure from our scene.[/QUOTE]
Competitive SC2 is dead outside of Korea professionally. Calling yourself a professional doesn't make sense when non professional and retired players from anothee country far exceed your skill. And memorable is subjective, Flash isn't outgoing but I remember his skill, some people value skill but I understand it isn't about being the best it's really about business. It's the idea of sc2 being such a difficult game we assume it should be more about skill less about business but at the end of the day it doesn't necessarily matter how good you are at the game. My main issue is the term professional being bandied about it's laughable.
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I feel like unless they are more tourneys in Korea (4 a year i just not enough for the biggest SC2 talent pool) then the scene will slowely die out. No new players in Korea can make it when there are so few oppertunities. The current Koreans are just gonna end up retiring because they aren't making enough money, which seems unfair because they ARE the better players.
As far as viewership goes, suspending the best players in the world from most tournaments is a backwards idea. Foreign players have never been THAT bad, Scarlett, Polt (I count him as foreign), Snute, Bunny etc did decent in HoTS. It's just the Koreans outnumbered and outskilled them when it came to winning. And Nerchio and Neeb are looking like they could compete against Koreans easily.
But people value skill, the good players should be the ones going to Blizzcon. Screwing over 90% of Korean players (aka 90% of pros out there) to make it easier for foreigners is horrible Have NA/EU-only cups sure, but at least have global series like IEM, DH, RB etc to keep the scene living.
EDIT: TL:DR I hope Blizzard review their decisions for WCS 2017 so that Korean playes can actually afford to keep playing
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There should have been region locked WCS right from the beginning. From 2010-2011.
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Ironically Byun just won code S, no team, no team house, no coach, just one guy with a dream, skill, foreign practice partners (neeb and chinese protosses), and a puppy. But we must have all just imagined that, because so many of our best players say it's impossible to compete with these things.
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EPT
