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On August 27 2016 06:40 Nerchio wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:34 Soularion wrote:
I'm pretty moderate on the whole 'foreigners have gotten better' thing. I think the system has certainly contributed to them getting better to some extent - uThermal, Neeb, Elazer, ShoWTimE were all probably going to become great foreigners regardless, but I do think that process was made more dramatic by the changes, either by making it faster or more effective. I do think they've gotten better, but nothing too ridiculous; the players who are super sick now (Nerchio, Neeb, Polt) would probably be super sick regardless, but there's a lot of moderate improvement across the board. If we didn't get more chances than in the past I would definitely be continuing my studies and right now I am full time instead. People don't realise that it was never the case that foreigners are lazy. In this infrastructure of Starcraft 2 with Kespa and everyone else there was no place for foreigners to catch up without changes to the core system.
This is a very good reason actually. Being a pro in Europe is hard and the new WCS system makes ppl stay instead of quitting.
Now i would love to see several global events a year too but if this year is sort of like a transition it s OK
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On August 27 2016 06:50 Soularion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:48 Edpayasugo wrote:
I have almost zero interest now in foreign events such as DH etc and this has been the worst year of SC2 IMO since I started watching, which I think is really sad, 2015 was probably the best year.
What sucks harder is my favourite player (INno) is out of individual leagues and SPL now and basically I won't see him play until next year, it's only August. I think this is a fair argument, and we should counteract it by having three seasons of play instead of just two. It's kind of weird to see KR going back to 2-seasons when 3 worked so well, but I imagine part of it is just because of the start of LotV. If you go towards making it 3 seasons for 2017, then we'll see effectively the same korean scene, and I think you should enjoy things a lot more 
Yes, true, but I still won't want to watch DH/IEM, and it felt like in 2015 there were tournaments I wanted to see every week. Plus no gfinity/UK tournaments this year which is also sad.
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On August 27 2016 06:48 Edpayasugo wrote:
I have almost zero interest now in foreign events such as DH etc and this has been the worst year of SC2 IMO since I started watching, which I think is really sad, 2015 was probably the best year.
What sucks harder is my favourite player (INno) is out of individual leagues and SPL now and basically I won't see him play until next year, it's only August.
I'm with you.
I used to wake up early on my day off to watch Dreamhack and I'd spend all day with the stream open (or usually multiple streams) in order to see the whole thing.
Now? I'll check the brackets and maybe stick around for a semifinal or a final if I like who's playing but otherwise I don't bother.
What kills me is that my schedule now keeps from me from consistently watching GSL and SSL so I'm even more annoyed that the Starcraft I CAN watch is this forced region lock shit.
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On August 27 2016 06:51 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:48 Edpayasugo wrote:
I have almost zero interest now in foreign events such as DH etc and this has been the worst year of SC2 IMO since I started watching, which I think is really sad, 2015 was probably the best year.
What sucks harder is my favourite player (INno) is out of individual leagues and SPL now and basically I won't see him play until next year, it's only August. I'm with you. I used to wake up early on my day off to watch Dreamhack and I'd spend all day with the stream open (or usually multiple streams) in order to see the whole thing. Now? I'll check the brackets and maybe stick around for a semifinal or a final if I like who's playing but otherwise I don't bother. What kills me is that my schedule now keeps from me from consistently watching GSL and SSL so I'm even more annoyed that the Starcraft I CAN watch is this forced region lock shit.
Yeah I'm exactly the same, weekends with theseevents used to be really exciting and there was a reason to cheer for a foreigner to go for an upset. If Drogo/uthermal/Harstem/whoever wins idc because they only beat some other foreigners or second rate Koreans.
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On August 27 2016 06:47 Waxangel wrote:
Whenever this topic comes up, I feel like a lot of us are just arguing our broader, societal ideologies rather than the facts.
lol I can almost agree with this - but it's factual that evolution is rooted in competition -
Factual that one kid in front a PC with chess program set to the easiest difficulty without ever raising it will improve at a drastically slower pace than sitting that same kid up and keeping at 1 level above his skill.
Sure - you wouldn't sit him there on GM from the start - because he'd lose interest.
BUT - you also wouldn't pay him a salary to keep beating the level 1 cpu over and over and praise him as a champion..if you did - you wouldn't be doing him a service at all for when he actually has to fend for himself in reality (post progamer career etc).
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Canada2764 Posts
On August 27 2016 06:54 DomeGetta wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:47 Waxangel wrote:
Whenever this topic comes up, I feel like a lot of us are just arguing our broader, societal ideologies rather than the facts. lol I can almost agree with this - but it's factual that evolution is rooted in competition - Factual that one kid in front a PC with chess program set to the easiest difficulty without ever raising it will improve at a drastically slower pace than sitting that same kid up and keeping at 1 level above his skill. Sure - you wouldn't sit him there on GM from the start - because he'd lose interest. BUT - you also wouldn't pay him a salary to keep beating the level 1 cpu over and over and praise him as a champion..if you did - you wouldn't be doing him a service at all for when he actually has to fend for himself in reality (post progamer career etc).
The metaphor here isn't what you described. A closer metaphor would be this-
You train a kid against a level 5 - moderate difficulty - CPU, without giving him money. And after playing against the level 5 CPU for a few weeks, you put him up against a level 9 CPU and say that, if he wins the match, he'll get $2000. But he doesn't practice against that CPU, so how is he going to win? So he loses, and he feels disappointed in himself.
Now, it's more like he's getting rewarded for winning against the level 5 CPU, which I still feel is a bit too charitable, yes, but the answer isn't to go back to 'fuck you if you cant beat the best players w/o practice against them'. The answer is pretty obviously to just let the kid practice against the CPU he's facing, regardless of how high level it is; a ladder-based region lock would make more sense for this, although hard to enforce.
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On August 27 2016 06:40 Soularion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:37 Miragee wrote:
What did I just read? So you can't become a better player because others are better than you because they put in more effort? Great attitude for someone competitive. You can't become a better player, because there are players who are better than you who don't play against you because they're from a different region (a more competitive/better region), and therefor you can never practice against them, unless you give up your life and move to Korea. The solution is to incentivize KR players to play in EU/NA ladders if they want to play in EU/NA, therefor making EU/NA as a whole more competitive, by making ladder better and making practice better.
So why should korean players go play EU/NA ladders for worse ping and worse level of play? Your argument would make more sense if you said that EU/NA players should ladder in KR.
On August 27 2016 06:41 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:37 Miragee wrote:
What did I just read? So you can't become a better player because others are better than you because they put in more effort? Great attitude for someone competitive. When others are so much better than you that you feel hopeless while you lose against them, and this happens over and over again, and you make almost no money from tournaments as a progamer because the rest of the competition is so far ahead of you that catching up could take years, you start to lose motivation. Seems pretty normal to me. I wonder how much of this "improvement" is WCS and how much of it were the changes to Legacy of the Void.
So how is that different for new korean players? They still manage to get to that level. Foreigners and koreans also had the same starting point. Koreans just moved ahead because of better training environment (which was actually a lot worse than in BW btw.).
On August 27 2016 06:40 Nerchio wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:34 Soularion wrote:
I'm pretty moderate on the whole 'foreigners have gotten better' thing. I think the system has certainly contributed to them getting better to some extent - uThermal, Neeb, Elazer, ShoWTimE were all probably going to become great foreigners regardless, but I do think that process was made more dramatic by the changes, either by making it faster or more effective. I do think they've gotten better, but nothing too ridiculous; the players who are super sick now (Nerchio, Neeb, Polt) would probably be super sick regardless, but there's a lot of moderate improvement across the board. If we didn't get more chances than in the past I would definitely be continuing my studies and right now I am full time instead. People don't realise that it was never the case that foreigners are lazy. In this infrastructure of Starcraft 2 with Kespa and everyone else there was no place for foreigners to catch up without changes to the core system.
I wouldn't say foreigners are lazy at all. It's just the way of training. Your progress, especially at high level, depends a lot on how the training is managed. I got the feeling that most foreigners always created their own schedule depending on what they were thinking was best while koreans had the benefit of team houses with people with years of experience in how to organise training. Even if it was more casual than in BW it still gave them a good advantage over time. Team houses outside of korea never existed to that extent and the community of pros/clans never felt like sitting together and continuously working on training schedules.
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Canada16699 Posts
On August 27 2016 05:12 Waxangel quoting uThermal:
I guess so. I think it’s pretty good. Like, the idea of WCS is good, but the execution was not that great, I think. There’s a lot of small issues here and there. The planning of the events is always pretty bad. Blizzard knows dates of qualifiers and stuff like that way before we get to know. It’s not like they know one month before and we find out three weeks before. Blizzard has a schedule with all their events and qualifiers and stuff. For example, for the qualifiers for the last WCS in Montreal, Blizzard knew the dates three months before, and they told us like one week before. The scheduling is really not that good.
Blizzard is great at making games and lousy at running competitive leagues. Could James Naismith have done what David Stern/Adam Silver do? nah.
how many game did Stern and Silver create? zero. Naismith and Silver/Stern are in totally different professions.
Blizzard needs to have the balls to find the right promoter and put the SC2 competitive leagues in their hands. At this point I guess that would be ATVI's new esports subsidiary.
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Canada2764 Posts
On August 27 2016 06:57 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:40 Soularion wrote:On August 27 2016 06:37 Miragee wrote:
What did I just read? So you can't become a better player because others are better than you because they put in more effort? Great attitude for someone competitive. You can't become a better player, because there are players who are better than you who don't play against you because they're from a different region (a more competitive/better region), and therefor you can never practice against them, unless you give up your life and move to Korea. The solution is to incentivize KR players to play in EU/NA ladders if they want to play in EU/NA, therefor making EU/NA as a whole more competitive, by making ladder better and making practice better. So why should korean players go play EU/NA ladders for worse ping and worse level of play? Your argument would make more sense if you said that EU/NA players should ladder in KR.
I'm saying that, if korean players want to play in EU/NA leagues, they should be required to play in EU/NA ladders. Just like if foreign players would want to play in KR, they'd have to play in KR ladders. I think this makes sense, and it would make the competition much more balanced. If you want to play tournaments against EU players, you play ladder against EU players. If they complain about the worse level of play/worse ping- why are they trying to play in foreign tournaments? Just stick to GSL.
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On August 27 2016 06:56 Soularion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:54 DomeGetta wrote:On August 27 2016 06:47 Waxangel wrote:
Whenever this topic comes up, I feel like a lot of us are just arguing our broader, societal ideologies rather than the facts. lol I can almost agree with this - but it's factual that evolution is rooted in competition - Factual that one kid in front a PC with chess program set to the easiest difficulty without ever raising it will improve at a drastically slower pace than sitting that same kid up and keeping at 1 level above his skill. Sure - you wouldn't sit him there on GM from the start - because he'd lose interest. BUT - you also wouldn't pay him a salary to keep beating the level 1 cpu over and over and praise him as a champion..if you did - you wouldn't be doing him a service at all for when he actually has to fend for himself in reality (post progamer career etc). The metaphor here isn't what you described. A closer metaphor would be this- You train a kid against a level 5 - moderate difficulty - CPU, without giving him money. And after playing against the level 5 CPU for a few weeks, you put him up against a level 9 CPU and say that, if he wins the match, he'll get $2000. But he doesn't practice against that CPU, so how is he going to win? So he loses, and he feels disappointed in himself. Now, it's more like he's getting rewarded for winning against the level 5 CPU, which I still feel is a bit too charitable, yes, but the answer isn't to go back to 'fuck you if you cant beat the best players w/o practice against them'. The answer is pretty obviously to just let the kid practice against the CPU he's facing, regardless of how high level it is; a ladder-based region lock would make more sense for this, although hard to enforce.
Yeah not sure I agree - there's nothing stopping any progamer from laddering on KR as much as they want - even with bad ping - that's even better practice rofl - if it was a game where you literally couldn't practice on the same level - I'd be with you there - but there are so many ways to practice this game - I really don't feel like there is some kind inherent disadvantage to foreign players regarding their practice - When the Kr players moved to EU and NA to compete you had an even better setting for practice - imo
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Okay, the WCS system has been like this for almost a year now. I am way beyond giving a singular fuck about the region lock of existing weekenders.
Even if foreigners improved relatively to Koreans, what does it matter when they never play against each other? You build them up and make them strong for what? So that the same 10 players can block the top of the WCS rankings? Even at Blizzcon, it's not 8 foreigners and 8 Koreans. It's 8 high level Code S players, 3 much weaker Koreans (maybe 4 if viOlet actually sneaks his way in there) and 4 to 5 top non-Koreans. Will those 4 or 5 go deep? Probably not, at least not all of them. In the end we'll probably not get that much direct comparison between top Koreans and top non-Koreans.
That's a shame. I want to see foreigners walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I want Nerchio to either show the world that Korean Zergs are inferior, or get shut up. Invitationals, Korea vs the world matches, whatever. Something. Even if it's not global events because the requirements turned out to be too high and no organizer wants to spend that much money, give players from both sides the chance to show themselves. But I guess SHOUTcraft Kings is all we get this year in terms of high level cross WCS competition. And that's "just" online.
The non-Koreans can make a living from this just fine, and I'm happy for them. But as a viewer who wants to see this kind of stuff, this year was difficult. Which is to say shit.
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On August 27 2016 06:40 Nerchio wrote:
If we didn't get more chances than in the past I would definitely be continuing my studies and right now I am full time instead. People don't realise that it was never the case that foreigners are lazy. In this infrastructure of Starcraft 2 with Kespa and everyone else there was no place for foreigners to catch up without changes to the core system.
How long do you think it will take for the foreigners to catch up so that we can unlock the region again?
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Look at the end of the day, Blizz can throw money at foreign players in order for them to be able to live and play Starcraft and pursue the dream of being in e-sports. Fine that's a cool cause and I'm happy these guys are able to make a living now.
But we need to STOP pretending that winning a championship in this new "charitable" format has any of the same prestige that it did before.
Who gets the money doesn't bug me nearly as much as the fake laurels we're awarding people now just because they managed to get past Polt or Hydra once in a tournament usually thanks to some nice bracket luck.
That's the compromise that needs to be reached here. So many of the advocates for region locking are arguing for the players to be able to support themselves, fine I can see the passion for that cause even if I disagree with it, but please stop pretending that it's anything other than welfare money under the current system.
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On August 27 2016 06:59 Soularion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:57 Miragee wrote:On August 27 2016 06:40 Soularion wrote:On August 27 2016 06:37 Miragee wrote:
What did I just read? So you can't become a better player because others are better than you because they put in more effort? Great attitude for someone competitive. You can't become a better player, because there are players who are better than you who don't play against you because they're from a different region (a more competitive/better region), and therefor you can never practice against them, unless you give up your life and move to Korea. The solution is to incentivize KR players to play in EU/NA ladders if they want to play in EU/NA, therefor making EU/NA as a whole more competitive, by making ladder better and making practice better. So why should korean players go play EU/NA ladders for worse ping and worse level of play? Your argument would make more sense if you said that EU/NA players should ladder in KR. I'm saying that, if korean players want to play in EU/NA leagues, they should be required to play in EU/NA ladders. Just like if foreign players would want to play in KR, they'd have to play in KR ladders. I think this makes sense, and it would make the competition much more balanced. If you want to play tournaments against EU players, you play ladder against EU players. If they complain about the worse level of play/worse ping- why are they trying to play in foreign tournaments? Just stick to GSL.
Yeah ok, but that's an entirely different topic. The argument was that players can't become better because there is nobody to train with. If you want to become better look out of better practice partners. Which means for foreigners to look for koreans not the other way around.
The other question is easy: Money. If I could grab an easy 50k why wouldn't I try doing so?
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On August 27 2016 07:04 rednusa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:40 Nerchio wrote:
If we didn't get more chances than in the past I would definitely be continuing my studies and right now I am full time instead. People don't realise that it was never the case that foreigners are lazy. In this infrastructure of Starcraft 2 with Kespa and everyone else there was no place for foreigners to catch up without changes to the core system. How long do you think it will take for the foreigners to catch up so that we can unlock the region again?
Maybe one more week of intense practice and we can rethink the system again
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On August 27 2016 06:57 Miragee wrote:
So how is that different for new korean players? They still manage to get to that level. Foreigners and koreans also had the same starting point. Koreans just moved ahead because of better training environment
Almost no new Korean players manage to actually break through anymore, it's been that way for a while now. Other players are too far ahead for them to even get through Code A qualifiers or the like. If they get signed as practice partners to Proleague teams, or even entirely to the teams as rookies, they don't even get roster spots on small teams like CJ Entus.
You'd have to be incredibly talented to be a genuinely new player (unlike for instance KT SpeeD, who was a practice partner for years, then retired, unretired and then finally made Code S for the first time, so not actually a new player) to make it now. Maybe there'll be enough retirements this year for those spots to slowly open up though, who knows.
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I understand that the WCS system is indeed good for the foreign community, and said community has produced some surprisingly entertaining games. But attitudes like those of uThermal make me laugh. Maybe you're marginally better on stage because you don't have as much jitters playing under pressure, but don't even pretend that you're objectively better at the game, mechanically or strategically.
For me, this last WCS championship was irrefutable evidence of how WCS region lock has boosted foreign pros' egos and wallets, and not much else. TRUE, someone who hasn't touched the Ro8 in SSL and GSL in eons, just strolled through Snute, Harstem, Welmu, Heromarine, and Polt, and given the opportunity, he probably would've done the same to every other competitor there, considering how comfortably he won every match. I don't know how any reasonable person could look at that tournament, look at what happens when a single Korea-trained Korean is let loose on the foreign scene, and agree with uThermal's comments.
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Canada2764 Posts
On August 27 2016 07:09 scbwsc2 wrote:
I understand that the WCS system is indeed good for the foreign community, and said community has produced some surprisingly entertaining games. But attitudes like those of uThermal make me laugh. Maybe you're marginally better on stage because you don't have as much jitters playing under pressure, but don't even pretend that you're objectively better at the game, mechanically or strategically.
For me, this last WCS championship was irrefutable evidence of how WCS region lock has boosted foreign pros' egos and wallets, and not much else. TRUE, someone who hasn't touched the Ro8 in SSL and GSL in eons, just strolled through Snute, Harstem, Welmu, Heromarine, and Polt, and given the opportunity, he probably would've done the same to every other competitor there, considering how comfortably he won every match. I don't know how any reasonable person could look at that tournament, look at what happens when a single Korea-trained Korean is let loose on the foreign scene, and agree with uThermal's comments.
But the only top foreigner he played was Snute, who had lost in the very same matchup to Guru of all people the tournament before. If you look at HomeStory Cup, you get a far less rosy picture of TRUE's success. If you look at online competitions, you get a far less rosy picture of TRUE's success. Was he the best player at Montreal? Probably, and definitely arguably, but there's no evidence to point to him being the best in the west right now, let alone by the margin you claim.
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On August 27 2016 06:50 Soularion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:48 Edpayasugo wrote:
I have almost zero interest now in foreign events such as DH etc and this has been the worst year of SC2 IMO since I started watching, which I think is really sad, 2015 was probably the best year.
What sucks harder is my favourite player (INno) is out of individual leagues and SPL now and basically I won't see him play until next year, it's only August. I think this is a fair argument, and we should counteract it by having three seasons of play instead of just two. It's kind of weird to see KR going back to 2-seasons when 3 worked so well, but I imagine part of it is just because of the start of LotV. If you go towards making it 3 seasons for 2017, then we'll see effectively the same korean scene, and I think you should enjoy things a lot more
I'm sure the absolute main reason KR went to 2 seasons of SSL/GSL and 3 rounds of Proleague is money and without more money they won't just go back.
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Canada2764 Posts
On August 27 2016 07:13 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2016 06:50 Soularion wrote:On August 27 2016 06:48 Edpayasugo wrote:
I have almost zero interest now in foreign events such as DH etc and this has been the worst year of SC2 IMO since I started watching, which I think is really sad, 2015 was probably the best year.
What sucks harder is my favourite player (INno) is out of individual leagues and SPL now and basically I won't see him play until next year, it's only August. I think this is a fair argument, and we should counteract it by having three seasons of play instead of just two. It's kind of weird to see KR going back to 2-seasons when 3 worked so well, but I imagine part of it is just because of the start of LotV. If you go towards making it 3 seasons for 2017, then we'll see effectively the same korean scene, and I think you should enjoy things a lot more I'm sure the absolute main reason KR went to 2 seasons of SSL/GSL and 3 rounds of Proleague is money.
Well, hopefully Blizzard can find a way to ameliorate the Korean scene, but if it's a purely money thing then I don't think people can complain too much. Unfortunately. :/
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EPT
