KeSPA is proud to announce 2016 StarCraft II KeSPA Cup! KeSPA Cup will be an international StarCraft II tournament pitting the best players around the world in a cut throat tournament to determine the best StarCraft II player in the world.
* Prize Money KRW 55,000,000 (1st place KRW 20,000,000)
* WCS Points 7,500 (1st 1500 points)
* 8 Invited Players - Proleague 2016 Top 4 Ranked Players : herO (CJ), Maru (Jin Air), Zest (kt), Stats (kt) - NA Seed Challenge : 2 Players (North America, Latin America, China, Oceania, Southeast Asia) - EU Seed Challenge : 2 Players (Europe)
* 8 Qualifier Spots There will be Global qualifiers on 09/13 (TUE) the KR/TW server.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
You'd think so but it's under invites, so who knows.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
You'd think so but it's under invites, so who knows.
I think that just means 2 spots are reserved for EU and NA respectively? And then everything else is open qualifiers on the KR/TW server.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
You'd think so but it's under invites, so who knows.
I think that just means 2 spots are reserved for EU and NA respectively? And then everything else is open qualifiers on the KR/TW server.
I hope so. If they decide to troll us and invite Hydra/Polt/TRUE, I'd be so disappointed
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
You'd think so but it's under invites, so who knows.
I think that just means 2 spots are reserved for EU and NA respectively? And then everything else is open qualifiers on the KR/TW server.
If it follows WCS rules it needs to have some regional qualifiers.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
Are you completely sure they're invites and not just NA/EU only spots? If they are invites then I agree, it isn't fair. Especially if they're based on WCS points.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
You'd think so but it's under invites, so who knows.
I think that just means 2 spots are reserved for EU and NA respectively? And then everything else is open qualifiers on the KR/TW server.
I hope so. If they decide to troll us and invite Hydra/Polt/TRUE, I'd be so disappointed
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
Are you completely sure they're invites and not just NA/EU only spots? If they are invites then I agree, it isn't fair. Especially if they're based on WCS points.
Its what the article says 8invites 8qualifiers how can an event that half of people got invited reward wcs pts??
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
Are you completely sure they're invites and not just NA/EU only spots? If they are invites then I agree, it isn't fair. Especially if they're based on WCS points.
Its what the article says 8invites 8qualifiers how can an event that half of people got invited reward wcs pts??
"WCS (Global) Events with less than 32 players: At least 8 spots must be attainable through an open qualifier" Blame Blizzard's rules
Invited players will get no WCS points unless they win a series though
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
Are you completely sure they're invites and not just NA/EU only spots? If they are invites then I agree, it isn't fair. Especially if they're based on WCS points.
Its what the article says 8invites 8qualifiers how can an event that half of people got invited reward wcs pts??
There's a difference between region restricted qualifiers and open qualifiers, which is why they are separated I think.
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
If it were based on WCS points, yes. But based on Proleague records I think it's perfectly fine. They invite the best players of a whole Proleague season with spots in Kespa Cup. I don't see what the big deal there is.
As for NA and EU seeds, "NA/EU Seed Challenge" sounds like a qualifier, right?
Yes for proleague is fine but no the na and europe are invites therefore those ppl dont have to qualify in kr server where theres little to no chance how is that fair? Why those 2spots couldnt just be an open qualifier? Why has to be invitew
Are you completely sure they're invites and not just NA/EU only spots? If they are invites then I agree, it isn't fair. Especially if they're based on WCS points.
Its what the article says 8invites 8qualifiers how can an event that half of people got invited reward wcs pts??
There's a difference between region restricted qualifiers and open qualifiers, which is why they are separated I think.
Yes but it says 8invites and 8qualify people very clearly unless the postes it wrong only way to qualify is trough kr server
On September 06 2016 19:34 Olli wrote: Maybe the qualified players get "invited", as in having their travel cost paid for? Might just be a translation thing.
Dont think this changes too much for Korea Blizzcon chances Last spot's now a fight between Classic, Patience and sOs (either wins GSL or needs to win CF+KeSPA to have a chance)
On September 06 2016 19:38 Inflicted wrote: Dont think this changes too much for Korea Blizzcon chances Last spot's now a fight between Classic, Patience and sOs (either wins GSL or needs to win CF+KeSPA to have a chance)
If ByuN wins GSL, herO and Cure still has a chance if they win Kespa Cup. They can barely knock Classic out assuming he doesn't qualify.
It could make a difference for foreigners, though. The bottom spots are still quite contested. That makes this especially interesting, because there's nothing else for foreigners to get WCS points from (aside from Mexico), so they really should be trying hard at this event.
Seriously 8 Koreans will have to play for a spot while 4 other Koreans who did well all year long in PL get invited while 4 foreigners who did nothing for that tourney will get a free spot, too? Like i find it funny that Kespa Cup isnt being a dick and saying fuck the players from the other WCS circuit (foreigners) they have no place here (unlike every other event 2016 ... -.- ) and then they give out 4 spots for free while the other 12 spots are kind hard earned? Wut?
On September 06 2016 21:43 ZertoN wrote: i would have rather seen zests and the NA+EU qualifier spots given to koreans, but should be a great event either way!
Why Zest? He did well enough in proleague to qualify just like the other three.
Too bad the global KR server qualifier conflicts with the players going home from copa america, would've loved to go to Korea to try qualifying through one of those 8 spots but short announcement is short. The EU and NA qualifiers server qualifiers are open to all wcs players with the available ping to try, right? Or is it wcs+passport region lock or simply open to all and latency lock. Would be great to see details on EU/NA qualis. Good luck to everyone #hype
On September 06 2016 21:43 ZertoN wrote: i would have rather seen zests and the NA+EU qualifier spots given to koreans, but should be a great event either way!
Why Zest? He did well enough in proleague to qualify just like the other three.
if youve seen zests recent form youd probably agree with me
EU and NA getting handy spots IMO. Why not have a global qualifier where they have to compete to qualify against Koreans? A Kespa Cup is better than no Kespa Cup I guess, but EU/NA getting more welfare by the looks of it.
On September 06 2016 22:15 Biscuittzz wrote: EU and NA getting handy spots IMO. Why not have a global qualifier where they have to compete to qualify against Koreans? A Kespa Cup is better than no Kespa Cup I guess, but EU/NA getting more welfare by the looks of it.
Maybe they had to give EU and NA guaranteed spots in exchange for the guaranteed spots for Proleague players. Or maybe, against all odds, they don't mind as much.
On September 06 2016 22:15 Biscuittzz wrote: EU and NA getting handy spots IMO. Why not have a global qualifier where they have to compete to qualify against Koreans? A Kespa Cup is better than no Kespa Cup I guess, but EU/NA getting more welfare by the looks of it.
Maybe they had to give EU and NA guaranteed spots in exchange for the guaranteed spots for Proleague players.
WCS handbook says they only needed the 8 Global Qualifiers spots, they can do w/e with the rest
Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
On September 06 2016 22:15 Biscuittzz wrote: EU and NA getting handy spots IMO. Why not have a global qualifier where they have to compete to qualify against Koreans? A Kespa Cup is better than no Kespa Cup I guess, but EU/NA getting more welfare by the looks of it.
Maybe they had to give EU and NA guaranteed spots in exchange for the guaranteed spots for Proleague players. Or maybe, against all odds, they don't mind as much.
Actually think I read it wrong, like a lot of people apparently, so these EU and NA spots are going to by decided through EU and NA qualifiers then? I like that better, At least they'll have to play to earn the spot, granted it's against EU and NA players.
I was annoyed because I thought they were just going to select 4 foreigners just like they select the Proleague players.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
Is that the same Olimoleague that Neeb was manhandled by Byun?
On September 06 2016 22:22 Olli wrote: Korean tournaments profit from having foreigners in their tournaments, it's that simple. People watch foreigners.
Yeah korean fans also want to see foreigners compete, GSL did not give seeds to foreigners because of welfare,kthey just wanted to see foreigners in korea. It's hype.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
On September 06 2016 22:22 Olli wrote: Korean tournaments profit from having foreigners in their tournaments, it's that simple. People watch foreigners.
Imagine the hype if Neeb makes it kinda deep into the tournament, or at least doesn't die in the first round
On September 06 2016 22:22 Olli wrote: Korean tournaments profit from having foreigners in their tournaments, it's that simple. People watch foreigners.
Imagine the hype if Neeb makes it kinda deep into the tournament, or at least doesn't die in the first round
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
Seems only fair to me, but I can respect that argument.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Incredibly funny to point out it was fucking Kespa who did it
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
Is that the same Olimoleague that Neeb was manhandled by Byun?
No sadly ByuN lost in the semi Finals to Reality :-/
On September 06 2016 22:22 Olli wrote: Korean tournaments profit from having foreigners in their tournaments, it's that simple. People watch foreigners.
Imagine the hype if Neeb makes it kinda deep into the tournament, or at least doesn't die in the first round
nope, not gonna happen
all foreigners will clearly be practicing for the Blizzcon and refuse to show good games
On September 06 2016 22:22 Olli wrote: Korean tournaments profit from having foreigners in their tournaments, it's that simple. People watch foreigners.
On September 07 2016 00:23 rednusa wrote: Suppose a Korean player qualifies as a result of this tournament, will one month be enough time to obtain a visa for Blizzcon?
Korea is involved with the visa waiver program. You can get one immediately with a phone call at the airport basically.
On September 06 2016 19:34 Olli wrote: Maybe the qualified players get "invited", as in having their travel cost paid for? Might just be a translation thing.
In addition to the required Global Qualifiers, WCS partners may invite additional players at their discretion
Any player in the tournament that did not qualify through a Global Qualifier will be considered an invitee
Invitees may not be seeded into the Top 8 and will only earn points after advancing a round
They're not from the global qualifier, so they're technically invitees. But Kespa may use any criteria to choose who they invite, including an open, region-restricted tournament. Until we hear more, we can't say anything for sure, but "Seed Challenge" sounds somewhat promising.
Holy shit, best tournament of 2016 apart from Blizzcon?
I hope some foreigners can make a good showing at least (as in don't get destroyed in the first two rounds).
And Korea doing the first global event is downright ironic. The fact that the first (and most likely last, apart from Blizzcon) such event is held at the end of the year is very telling.
Nice more korean starcraft to watch is always a good thing. Having foreigners there should be fun as well, Apollo was right we actually get a global event. Apollo for president!
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
I mean i watched that too and it was fine but in the end i still wanna know how Neeb does against TY, Maru, Stats, Dark, etc and not if he can beat Hydra. Region locking is fine if there is enough "global events" to put it all into context. Like i wanna see this at least every two months or so :/
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
I am not sure if this has been brought up yet, but isn't any invite unfair to begin with?
Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
Seems only fair to me, but I can respect that argument.
Okay, let me give you an example then.
Let's assume sOs wins GSL and secures his Blizzcon spot that way. Then the Korean top 8 for Blizzcon is Dark, Solar, Zest, Stats, TY, sOs, ByuN, Dear. Now let's assume the winner of KeSPA Cup gets a Blizzcon ticket. Say, perhaps, INnoVation wins KeSPA Cup. INnoVation only has 800 WCS points, he's far away from the top 8. Even with the points from KeSPA Cup he'd only be at 2300. But because of the guaranteed ticket he would still have a Blizzcon seed and kick out the lowest ranking top 8 player (by points).
In this case, Dear, who would have more than twice as many WCS points as INnoVation for his vastly superior performances in Korean leagues (2x GSL Ro4, 1x SSL Ro8) would get cut. In favor of someone who only really performed for the 3 days of KeSPA Cup.
On September 07 2016 02:03 CyanEsports wrote: Between IEM Goyang and this, the run up to Blizzcon will be really busy! This will be really exciting!
Its unfortunate that the qualifiers fall so close to Copa Intercontinental. Especially when the race for 8th place is so tight.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Incredibly funny to point out it was fucking Kespa who did it
Hey, I did it first D:
On September 06 2016 18:59 Olli wrote: It's so incredibly fitting that it's KeSPA who pull out the first and probably only Global Event of the year.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Polt is first in WCS pts and qualified himself at the very first Event allowing you to qualify for Blizzcon. How is this the opposite of dominating? Oo
So, this is the "Hero, win or loose everything" Cup? Because only a first place makes him get to Blizzcon. Second place would make him miss the last spot by probably the smallest amount possible in KR, 50 pts.
And that's likely completely intended, seeing how 1st place is not that many more points. Indeed, global events are only described as awarding in total 7500 pts.
Coincidentally, the least points awarded are 225, i.e. make or break for any of Elazer, viOLet or PtitDrogo. uThermal still has Copa Intercontinental, but getting only those 225 points over those 2 tournies would net him 2605, ie missing Blizzcon by... 10 points.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
Seems only fair to me, but I can respect that argument.
Okay, let me give you an example then.
Let's assume sOs wins GSL and secures his Blizzcon spot that way. Then the Korean top 8 for Blizzcon is Dark, Solar, Zest, Stats, TY, sOs, ByuN, Dear. Now let's assume the winner of KeSPA Cup gets a Blizzcon ticket. Say, perhaps, INnoVation wins KeSPA Cup. INnoVation only has 800 WCS points, he's far away from the top 8. Even with the points from KeSPA Cup he'd only be at 2300. But because of the guaranteed ticket he would still have a Blizzcon seed and kick out the lowest ranking top 8 player (by points).
In this case, Dear, who would have more than twice as many WCS points as INnoVation for his vastly superior performances in Korean leagues (2x GSL Ro4, 1x SSL Ro8) would get cut. In favor of someone who only really performed for the 3 days of KeSPA Cup.
I'm not trying to dispute how the points are allocated, although I think they need to think about Point distribution in 2017, TRUE got 3000 for his WCS Summer victory but a Global Kespa Cup 1st place winner gets 1500? I simply feel this tournament is worthy of a direct seed to Blizzcon if the other direct seed LAN tournaments are.
On September 07 2016 03:15 Diabolique wrote: I am so happy for Maru for this Kespa Cup ... finally, he can win a title. Sad, he can't make it to BlizzCon though ...
Maru is only good at bo1 these days, no title for him in the near future
On September 07 2016 03:15 Diabolique wrote: I am so happy for Maru for this Kespa Cup ... finally, he can win a title. Sad, he can't make it to BlizzCon though ...
Maru is only good at bo1 these days, no title for him in the near future
Maru will trash your Zest with his two cannon rushes :-)
On September 07 2016 03:15 Diabolique wrote: I am so happy for Maru for this Kespa Cup ... finally, he can win a title. Sad, he can't make it to BlizzCon though ...
Maru is only good at bo1 these days, no title for him in the near future
He needs to just win a couple of sets of 2-4 consecutive bo1s (depending on the bo-ness of the sets)
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Group stage ro16 makes it harder for casual wins.
True, but they might get 3rd in their group instead of last
On September 07 2016 02:35 Eiltonn wrote:
Polt is first in WCS pts and qualified himself at the very first Event allowing you to qualify for Blizzcon. How is this the opposite of dominating? Oo
I was looking at them broadly. Yes, Polt won the first tournament and got second recently, but otherwise he got 4th and fell out early in the Dreamhack opens. People thought that he would do very well in all the tournaments. He has done well, he hasn't been dominant.
On September 07 2016 03:15 Diabolique wrote: I am so happy for Maru for this Kespa Cup ... finally, he can win a title. Sad, he can't make it to BlizzCon though ...
Maru is only good at bo1 these days, no title for him in the near future
Maru will trash your Zest with his two cannon rushes :-)
I mean Zest is kinda bad atm, sure. Doesn't change the fact that Maru did very badly in starleagues where you need to play boX series And i like Maru as well btw ^^
On September 07 2016 01:49 Shellshock wrote: Neeb 4-0 Maru in the final imo
if you consider how helpless maru looked against gateway pushes recently, the result wouldnt be unlikly. but neeb wont make it deep. lets hope he can qualify. and with maru it depends on the draw.
Is this pretty much the first time in the entire history of SC2 that the absolute top foreigners and top Koreans have faced off against each other en masse in a proper offline tournament? It's certainly never happened at Blizzcon.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
Seems only fair to me, but I can respect that argument.
Okay, let me give you an example then.
Let's assume sOs wins GSL and secures his Blizzcon spot that way. Then the Korean top 8 for Blizzcon is Dark, Solar, Zest, Stats, TY, sOs, ByuN, Dear. Now let's assume the winner of KeSPA Cup gets a Blizzcon ticket. Say, perhaps, INnoVation wins KeSPA Cup. INnoVation only has 800 WCS points, he's far away from the top 8. Even with the points from KeSPA Cup he'd only be at 2300. But because of the guaranteed ticket he would still have a Blizzcon seed and kick out the lowest ranking top 8 player (by points).
In this case, Dear, who would have more than twice as many WCS points as INnoVation for his vastly superior performances in Korean leagues (2x GSL Ro4, 1x SSL Ro8) would get cut. In favor of someone who only really performed for the 3 days of KeSPA Cup.
I'm not trying to dispute how the points are allocated, although I think they need to think about Point distribution in 2017, TRUE got 3000 for his WCS Summer victory but a Global Kespa Cup 1st place winner gets 1500? I simply feel this tournament is worthy of a direct seed to Blizzcon if the other direct seed LAN tournaments are.
All weekend tournaments used to be like this. Maybe a bit weaker on average because of Proleague. And lower prize pool because the "Global" requirement didn't exist. The fact that this tournament makes you feel like the winner should get a direct Blizzcon seed just exemplifies how much of a loss we took in tournaments this year. Because in the grand scheme of Starcraft 2, it's not a once in a lifetime event.
On September 07 2016 04:27 Justinian wrote: Is this pretty much the first time in the entire history of SC2 that the absolute top foreigners and top Koreans have faced off against each other en masse in a proper offline tournament? It's certainly never happened at Blizzcon.
It'll most likely be 12 Koreans vs 4 foreigners. Not really that en masse, and in the end not too different from some IEM Ro16s.
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
On September 07 2016 04:27 Justinian wrote: Is this pretty much the first time in the entire history of SC2 that the absolute top foreigners and top Koreans have faced off against each other en masse in a proper offline tournament? It's certainly never happened at Blizzcon.
On September 06 2016 23:26 Olli wrote: Incredibly relieved to be able to point to this and say "but we did have a Global Event!" when the discussion about WCS 2017 starts.
Yeah it's a huge relief, I only wish the winner of this would get an invite to Blizzcon.
It's good that they don't. Stuff like that only punishes people who were consistent throughout the year but didn't actually win a tournament, especially because it's a very late announcement.
Seems only fair to me, but I can respect that argument.
Okay, let me give you an example then.
Let's assume sOs wins GSL and secures his Blizzcon spot that way. Then the Korean top 8 for Blizzcon is Dark, Solar, Zest, Stats, TY, sOs, ByuN, Dear. Now let's assume the winner of KeSPA Cup gets a Blizzcon ticket. Say, perhaps, INnoVation wins KeSPA Cup. INnoVation only has 800 WCS points, he's far away from the top 8. Even with the points from KeSPA Cup he'd only be at 2300. But because of the guaranteed ticket he would still have a Blizzcon seed and kick out the lowest ranking top 8 player (by points).
In this case, Dear, who would have more than twice as many WCS points as INnoVation for his vastly superior performances in Korean leagues (2x GSL Ro4, 1x SSL Ro8) would get cut. In favor of someone who only really performed for the 3 days of KeSPA Cup.
I'm not trying to dispute how the points are allocated, although I think they need to think about Point distribution in 2017, TRUE got 3000 for his WCS Summer victory but a Global Kespa Cup 1st place winner gets 1500? I simply feel this tournament is worthy of a direct seed to Blizzcon if the other direct seed LAN tournaments are.
All weekend tournaments used to be like this. Maybe a bit weaker on average because of Proleague. And lower prize pool because the "Global" requirement didn't exist. The fact that this tournament makes you feel like the winner should get a direct Blizzcon seed just exemplifies how much of a loss we took in tournaments this year. Because in the grand scheme of Starcraft 2, it's not a once in a lifetime event.
I'm not saying it's once in a lifetime, and a player like herO has a real shot to get into Blizzcon because of this event, he could theoretically overtake Classic, so there's still something to play for! Hindsight is always 20/20 and when I look back on the year, this event (albeit short notice) certainly has the caliber of players worthy of the winner being awarded a spot. I wish that were the case, but I can understand and respect the arguments against it. It would certainly increase the hype levels x9000
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
Nerchio losing to KR Zergs would be amusing.
It definitely would :-)
Not really, his ZvZ is shit atm, everyone knows that. If anything, him loosing in ZvT would be telling something. Unless it's against Maru. Everyone can loose to Maru.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
Is that the same Olimoleague that Neeb was manhandled by Byun?
No sadly ByuN lost in the semi Finals to Reality :-/
On September 06 2016 19:16 Major wrote: Im tired and i think i speak on behalf alot of ppl of these invites based on points ita totally unfair and really should b removed for next year
Don't worry. You'll prob making it through qualifiers without dropping a map.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
I pretty much covered all I need to say in answer in the Dreamhack Montreal thread
On August 15 2016 04:25 showstealer1829 wrote: In WCS 2015 we had: S1 Korea vs Korea final
S2 Korea vs Foreigner final
S3 Foreigner vs Foreigner final
In WCS 2016 we had: S1 Korea vs Foreigner final
S2 Foreigner vs Foreigner final
S3 Korean vs Korean final
The more things change, the more they stay the same
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
All depends on bracket though. Polt was knocked out by Showtime and Nerchio who are in the top 3 foreigners at the moment. He was knocked out by Firecake which I will grant was a shock. Polt has only gone to 5 tournaments this year, skipping Leipzig, WCS Shanghai and IEM Shanghai. In the ones he attended, He's gotten a 1st, 2nd, 3/4, and a Ro16 loss to Firecake. Also a Ro32 loss to showtime but that's bracket luck. Either way that's the best set of results from anyone in WCS this year so while perhaps not dominating he's on top IMO.
I'll agree with TRUE and Hydra though. TRUE came out of nowhere and Hydra has completely dropped off.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
Actually if you were to say that there are 100 Foreigners and 5 Koreans to fight for 8 spots, with an outcome of 4 Koreans getting through, that is domination to be fair.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
Polt, Hydra, Violet, TRUE and who else??? Don't say MaSa.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
Polt, Hydra, Violet, TRUE and who else??? Don't say MaSa.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
Polt, Hydra, Violet, TRUE and who else??? Don't say MaSa.
MaSa
If you go by country they are born in then I guess yes but I mean he's Canadian for ages. people are generally considering him as a foreigner.
he also hasn't been in the korean practice environment which is the unfair advantage foreigners are speaking from.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
All depends on bracket though. Polt was knocked out by Showtime and Nerchio who are in the top 3 foreigners at the moment. He was knocked out by Firecake which I will grant was a shock. Polt has only gone to 5 tournaments this year, skipping Leipzig, WCS Shanghai and IEM Shanghai. In the ones he attended, He's gotten a 1st, 2nd, 3/4, and a Ro16 loss to Firecake. Also a Ro32 loss to showtime but that's bracket luck. Either way that's the best set of results from anyone in WCS this year so while perhaps not dominating he's on top IMO.
I'll agree with TRUE and Hydra though. TRUE came out of nowhere and Hydra has completely dropped off.
Agreed, Polt is one of the best players and has some of the best results. I would only say that he is one of the best players in WCS. From before, people that he would be the best player.
But I don't take into account bracket luck as much because of people like Nerchio and Showtime and Neeb running into each other and taking each other out. I would consider Nerchio, Neeb, Showtime, and Polt around similar levels in WCS currently. Polt's probably a bit better, but they've all beaten each other in one tournament of qualifier or another.
Also his second place was also due to a bit of luck of having drogo collapse.
And getting into Blizzcon does not equal domination. It means you're very good, but it does not mean you dominated (not necessarily anyways).
i wish they had a giant cup with a base that had the names of its winners engraved; the base of the cup grows in size as more winners are added. i wish they had a cup like that.. it would be so cool.
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
All depends on bracket though. Polt was knocked out by Showtime and Nerchio who are in the top 3 foreigners at the moment. He was knocked out by Firecake which I will grant was a shock. Polt has only gone to 5 tournaments this year, skipping Leipzig, WCS Shanghai and IEM Shanghai. In the ones he attended, He's gotten a 1st, 2nd, 3/4, and a Ro16 loss to Firecake. Also a Ro32 loss to showtime but that's bracket luck. Either way that's the best set of results from anyone in WCS this year so while perhaps not dominating he's on top IMO.
I'll agree with TRUE and Hydra though. TRUE came out of nowhere and Hydra has completely dropped off.
Agreed, Polt is one of the best players and has some of the best results. I would only say that he is one of the best players in WCS. From before, people that he would be the best player.
But I don't take into account bracket luck as much because of people like Nerchio and Showtime and Neeb running into each other and taking each other out. I would consider Nerchio, Neeb, Showtime, and Polt around similar levels in WCS currently. Polt's probably a bit better, but they've all beaten each other in one tournament of qualifier or another.
Also his second place was also due to a bit of luck of having drogo collapse.
And getting into Blizzcon does not equal domination. It means you're very good, but it does not mean you dominated (not necessarily anyways).
I think bracket luck is important if we're discussing tournament results. For example Snute also crashed out before in the Ro32 to Guru if I remember correctly. Both Polt and Snute thus have lost in the Ro32 to Showtime and Guru respectively. While no losses are good, losing to Showtime is 'better' than losing to Guru based on the standard of the players if you get me?
I never said getting into Blizzcon individually meant dominating. I would even agree with you there, take Showtime for example: won the championship and got his place at Blizzcon but hardly dominating. What we were discussing was that theoretically if there were 5 Koreans in the WCS system and they all managed to secure a spot ( which may not happen in reality) then 5/8 foreigner spots would be occupied by Koreans, which could be deemed a dominance in effect.
All this hate against against foreigners in here makes me sick. Ok i get it you love your koreans and i agree the current wcs system is unfair against them but i think its awesome to finally have a global event and its still 3/4 of spots to koreans and if they are that much better they will get all the high finishers and prizemoney so how on earth can you be so salty about that? No offense but i cant understand... great job Kespa!
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
All depends on bracket though. Polt was knocked out by Showtime and Nerchio who are in the top 3 foreigners at the moment. He was knocked out by Firecake which I will grant was a shock. Polt has only gone to 5 tournaments this year, skipping Leipzig, WCS Shanghai and IEM Shanghai. In the ones he attended, He's gotten a 1st, 2nd, 3/4, and a Ro16 loss to Firecake. Also a Ro32 loss to showtime but that's bracket luck. Either way that's the best set of results from anyone in WCS this year so while perhaps not dominating he's on top IMO.
I'll agree with TRUE and Hydra though. TRUE came out of nowhere and Hydra has completely dropped off.
Agreed, Polt is one of the best players and has some of the best results. I would only say that he is one of the best players in WCS. From before, people that he would be the best player.
But I don't take into account bracket luck as much because of people like Nerchio and Showtime and Neeb running into each other and taking each other out. I would consider Nerchio, Neeb, Showtime, and Polt around similar levels in WCS currently. Polt's probably a bit better, but they've all beaten each other in one tournament of qualifier or another.
Also his second place was also due to a bit of luck of having drogo collapse.
And getting into Blizzcon does not equal domination. It means you're very good, but it does not mean you dominated (not necessarily anyways).
I think bracket luck is important if we're discussing tournament results. For example Snute also crashed out before in the Ro32 to Guru if I remember correctly. Both Polt and Snute thus have lost in the Ro32 to Showtime and Guru respectively. While no losses are good, losing to Showtime is 'better' than losing to Guru based on the standard of the players if you get me?
I never said getting into Blizzcon individually meant dominating. I would even agree with you there, take Showtime for example: won the championship and got his place at Blizzcon but hardly dominating. What we were discussing was that theoretically if there were 5 Koreans in the WCS system and they all managed to secure a spot ( which may not happen in reality) then 5/8 foreigner spots would be occupied by Koreans, which could be deemed a dominance in effect.
Yeah, I get you, but since the results of Nerchio, Showtime (some of them anyhow) can also be related due to bracket luck. Neeb for instance fell to Nerchio in a previous tournament, and if he hadn't fallen, might he have done better? It's just that when we get down to each person's bracket and how easy or difficult their respective brackets might have been, it gets kind of complicated and very theoretical. Especially if we contemplate how far a player might have gone had he not met a certain person at a certain time.
Well, currently there are four Koreans, and at least three of them will make it in, so that is correct that they are "dominating" the foreign scene with regards to the amount of Koreans and how many made it through.
I was just considering that these Koreans were thought to, at the beginning of the year, to not only make it to Blizzcon and thus show dominance there but also to dominate or do very well in most if not all of their tournaments. (Which Polt has, to a certain degree).
On September 07 2016 12:37 breaker1328 wrote: So... what happens when Neeb or Nerchio (the consensus top foreginers) wins Blizzcon?
That will be the time i relaize you all are just in my head and esports isn't actually real. I mean people watching other people playing videogames, makes no sense at all
On September 07 2016 12:37 breaker1328 wrote: So... what happens when Neeb or Nerchio (the consensus top foreginers) wins Blizzcon?
It's easy: they won't.
Though, by heavily theorycrafting, IF Neeb got 3rd in WCS points, he would face Zest, True, and Byun. Zest is playing really bad right now, and he is losing everything. If that keeps up, then I could see Neeb upsetting him, and Neeb's already won versus Byun (despite Byun winning their last encounter), so Neeb could potentially beat him. Actually, Neeb's beaten True as well, so if Neeb was placed in group D, as things are now, I could see him advancing. Now, I couldn't see him advancing any farther, but I don't think it's impossible.
Can't help wondering what KeSPA got from Blizzard for this. They were probably negotiating to the last minute, otherwise they would have announced it earlier.
Still: pretty cool! I was losing hope that there would be a global event at all.
But why monday finals? Well thankfully I am done working by then .
Clearly because October 3rd is a holiday in Germany. We are the core audience of KeSPA Cup. Confirmed.
On September 06 2016 20:14 Inflicted wrote: Qualifier maps are Frost - KSS - Frozen Temple (in that order) RIP Zergs?
Frost and Frozen should be good enough for the really good ones to qualify.
I did not know that Germany celebrated our foundation day too, even as a holiday as well!
10/3 is a holiday in Korea as well. National foundation day of ancient chosun. (some say it was founded B.C. 2200, but historical evidence says it was founded around B.C.1100.)
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
Aren't the requirements for global events higher though?
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
On September 07 2016 12:37 breaker1328 wrote: So... what happens when Neeb or Nerchio (the consensus top foreginers) wins Blizzcon?
That will be the time i relaize you all are just in my head and esports isn't actually real. I mean people watching other people playing videogames, makes no sense at all
Then you realize that would mean that swag_bro, sackofwetmice, baskerville, shauni, yoko, fluffy and myself are all products of your mind and swiftly return back to the fantasy and forget everything
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Didn't Blizzard even pay the organizers to exclude Koreans? Meaning: If they organized a WCS Event, they got money, if they did a global event, they didn't?
On September 06 2016 22:34 Eiltonn wrote: Btw what except for Neebs recent run in the Olimo Cup makes people think that foreigners will be able to beat Koreans? I do not mean any offense, but when there is 8 people going through KR only qualifiers + herO, Maru, Zest and Stats the only chance i see for the foreigners is Zest going for a cannon rush lol
So Zest will cannon rush....and lose badly right?
Besides, once you get past the top Koreans, (and there's no guarantee that only the very top Koreans will make it through the qualifiers) you get to Reality, alive, ryung, and gumiho. And all of those players have been beaten by a number of foreigners.
So if (and this is a big if) the best of the best foreigners make it through, they may not be able to beat the top Koreans, but they'll likely put up some good games versus the weaker Koreans who qualify.
On September 07 2016 01:15 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On September 07 2016 01:12 paralleluniverse wrote: Is this the first global event of the year?
Having so few global events is one of the major letdowns of this year's WCS system.
Yeah i think it is. Personally i only have two problems with the system: We have less korean tournaments and we have less "global" events because any global from last year got region locked this year.
=> It's not nearly as interesting to follow sc2 this year unless all you care for is foreigners winning tournaments
But if you even care a bit for foreigners winning, then SC2 has been very interesting to follow. (Especially how Polt and Hydra were expected to dominate and then did the exact opposite.)
Ehhhh out of the 3 WCS Championships this year, Polt won 1 and was a finalist in the other. Hardly doing the exact opposite haha. So 2/3 of the WCS this year have been won by Koreans, but that's the opposite right? ;/
As I said, he's done well. People were not speaking about True when they said Hydra and Polt would dominate. Ok, let's look for a moment at Hydra. One win, two ro8, two ro16, a ro4, and a ro32. This is hardly domination by Hydra. He's done significantly worse than people though he would. I would say that this is close to the opposite of dominant.
Now Polt won one tournament and placed 2nd in another. However, he also has a ro4 finish, a ro16 finish, and a ro32 finish.
I will admit that the "complete opposite" was not the right phrase for Polt. (For hydra, yes it was). However, people were expecting that he'd get ro4 or higher every tournament. And though he did win a tournament (Early into LotV) and he just placed 2nd (though if drogo hadn't choked he would have gotten ro8). But the fact that he got out in the ro16 and the ro32 is huge. To have that many foreign players advance over Polt was a big upset.
In WCS, Koreans have won 3/8 of all foreign tournaments. Perhaps not individually, but I would say that 37.5% of all tournaments is the opposite of Korean domination in WCS.
it's bigger when you take into account that there are only three Koreans and the rest are foreigners
There's 4 and all of them might make Blizzcon (though viOlet probably won't).
E: Actually there's 5. Still, 5 of like 100 are Korean and 3-4 make it. Not domination but it's a pretty silly percentage.
Polt, Hydra, Violet, TRUE and who else??? Don't say MaSa.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
Isn't the reason for the tournament organizers don't want that is that doing a circuit event much cheaper according to WCS rules?
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
Nerchio losing to KR Zergs would be amusing.
It definitely would :-)
Not really, his ZvZ is shit atm, everyone knows that. If anything, him loosing in ZvT would be telling something. Unless it's against Maru. Everyone can loose to Maru.
Nerchio said Maru's overrated and not really that great. I'm gonna hold him to that.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Didn't Blizzard even pay the organizers to exclude Koreans? Meaning: If they organized a WCS Event, they got money, if they did a global event, they didn't?
Yep, Global Events aren't supported by Blizzard. At least that's according to the WCS 2017 announcement.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Didn't Blizzard even pay the organizers to exclude Koreans? Meaning: If they organized a WCS Event, they got money, if they did a global event, they didn't?
Yep, Global Events aren't supported by Blizzard. At least that's according to the WCS 2017 announcement.
And good luck finding organizers who are willing to provide the 50,000$ prize pools by themselves.
In 2015 that was DH: Winter and IEM Katowice (for things that aren't main WCS tournaments). In 2014 we had DH: Winter, IEM Katowice, RB Washington, KeSPA Cup. And DH: Winter is always before the new WCS season starts.
Ok to be fair though: It seems very likely that tournament organizers actually had a talk with blizzard and these tournament organizers probably would have dropped sc2 completely from their weekend tournaments which then resulted in blizzard restructuring wcs as they did (aka make IEM, Dreamhack, whoever have sc2 that way) IIRC TotalBiscuit implied something like that (not that he would necessarily know, but he at least speculated)
On September 07 2016 17:29 The_Red_Viper wrote: Ok to be fair though: It seems very likely that tournament organizers actually had a talk with blizzard and these tournament organizers probably would have dropped sc2 completely from their weekend tournaments which then resulted in blizzard restructuring wcs as they did (aka make IEM, Dreamhack, whoever have sc2 that way) IIRC TotalBiscuit implied something like that (not that he would necessarily know, but he at least speculated)
But that's also why from the start people were saying we'll get one or maybe two WCS Global Events at most this year, many were doubting Global Events would happen at all. Which, for an entire WCS year, is pretty shitty.
I assume if Blizzard didn't agree to the organizers' conditions we wouldn't even have gotten IEM's silly 8-man IEM Taipei invitational.
Yeah sure it's shitty, but it's unfair to blame blizzard for it when they pretty much sponsor the whole sc2 scene on their own already. Did they do an amazing job building a strong sc2 esports scene since the beginning of wcs, etc? No. But not everything is in their control either and at this point they already do a lot to at least keep it alive.
On September 07 2016 17:48 The_Red_Viper wrote: Yeah sure it's shitty, but it's unfair to blame blizzard for it when they pretty much sponsor the whole sc2 scene on their own already. Did they do an amazing job building a strong sc2 esports scene since the beginning of wcs, etc? No. But not everything is in their control either and at this point they already do a lot to at least keep it alive.
They could have not made the prize pool requirement for Global Events an amount most organizers per default aren't willing to invest. For the entirety of HotS it's only been IEM Katowice (which was WCS Winter this year so no luck there), DH: Winter (which is after Blizzcon so not WCS), MLG (in 2013, the 2014 one was 40k and then they stopped), Red Bull (who also haven't done an individual SC2 tournament since 2014) and KeSPA Cup who met the "Global Event" requirements.
They set the bar too high. They should have realized that. They pumped so much money into the scene all over the place and Global Events end up being the only thing they don't support. The thing many people would want because they had them for years.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Didn't Blizzard even pay the organizers to exclude Koreans? Meaning: If they organized a WCS Event, they got money, if they did a global event, they didn't?
Yep, Global Events aren't supported by Blizzard. At least that's according to the WCS 2017 announcement.
On September 07 2016 04:27 Justinian wrote: Is this pretty much the first time in the entire history of SC2 that the absolute top foreigners and top Koreans have faced off against each other en masse in a proper offline tournament? It's certainly never happened at Blizzcon.
Lol what you described used to be a regular thing in SC2. There were countless weekend tourneys like IEM, Dreamhack qnd especially MLG. There the best players from both sides used to play against each other. Tbh i never had so much fun watching sc2 like i had during some 2011 MLGs, these tourneys were straight up perfect
On September 07 2016 11:32 IArako wrote: All this hate against against foreigners in here makes me sick. Ok i get it you love your koreans and i agree the current wcs system is unfair against them but i think its awesome to finally have a global event and its still 3/4 of spots to koreans and if they are that much better they will get all the high finishers and prizemoney so how on earth can you be so salty about that? No offense but i cant understand... great job Kespa!
This whole eco system around SC2 makes me sick. In my eyes its fucking ridiculous and dumb af. Like yes its a shame when there is not enough money in the foreign SC2 scene for the progamers to make a decent living off it. But no one is entitled to be living off of SC2. So if it doesnt work out for you, im sorry but to me the solution is not artificially pumping money in their scene while they dont really deserve it performance wise and thereby fucking up the Koreans who actually aint naturally better at SC2 they just train a lot more. Take a look on Aligulac. From the 40 programers who made most money in SC2 this year only 8 play in the korean WCS system. While probably the top 15 or 20 of players all play in the korean eco system. Cant wait for the friggin "but foreigners are on korean level" arguments now. That only came up since foreigners didnt get to play against koreans anymore lol.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Exactly this! When Blizzard creates such a system they obviously are responsible for what changes to their system do fo everybody in it. Blizzard failed massively this year.
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
Nerchio losing to KR Zergs would be amusing.
It definitely would :-)
Not really, his ZvZ is shit atm, everyone knows that. If anything, him loosing in ZvT would be telling something. Unless it's against Maru. Everyone can loose to Maru.
Nerchio said Maru's overrated and not really that great. I'm gonna hold him to that.
wtf? Maru is easily top 5 or better. What does that make Nerchio then? Even worse than overrated and not really that great? Well eager to see your performance at Blizzcon Nerchio lol. And yes a player of Nerchios calibre is surely a lot more deserving of playing there than some scrub like Maru, right?
On September 07 2016 19:21 Poopi wrote: Okay so is it possible for ByuN to lose his Blizzcon spot?
If sOs wins GSL, ByuN doesn't win the cross finals and doesn't qualify for KeSPA Cup (or qualifies but finishes below top 4), Dear qualifies for KeSPA Cup (or gets a better finish at KeSPA Cup than ByuN) and one of Classic/Patience reach the KeSPA Cup finals (or win the thing if he qualifies), ByuN is out.
Soooooooooooooo... not that likely.
On September 07 2016 18:21 Eiltonn wrote: wtf? Maru is easily top 5 or better.
Nerchio said that after MyuNgSiK beat Maru in GSL, which raises the very valid point that outside of Proleague this year Maru has delivered virtually no evidence that what you say is true. That is why he won't be at Blizzcon. Top 5 player by skill or not, by individual success he's barely top 30. Unless for him Proleague >>>>>>> individual results this was kinda a wasted year for Maru.
On September 07 2016 19:21 Poopi wrote: Okay so is it possible for ByuN to lose his Blizzcon spot?
If sOs wins GSL, ByuN doesn't win the cross finals and doesn't qualify for KeSPA Cup, Dear qualifies for KeSPA Cup (or gets a better finish at KeSPA Cup than ByuN) and one of Classic/Patience reach the KeSPA Cup finals (or win if he qualifies), ByuN is out.
On September 07 2016 18:21 Eiltonn wrote: wtf? Maru is easily top 5 or better.
Nerchio said that after MyuNgSiK beat Maru in GSL, which raises the very valid point that outside of Proleague this year Maru has delivered virtually no evidence that what you say is true.
Wait since when cross finals offer WCS points? sOs winning, ByuN qualifying for Kespa Cup but having a worse finish than Dear, and Classic/Patience reaching the finals of a ro16 tourney filled with foreigners, doesn't seem that unlikely unfortunately :/. Too many protosses, it'll be very hard.
Can we even trust Nerchio if he didn't troll losing the ZvT he lost recently btw? :o
On September 07 2016 19:21 Poopi wrote: Okay so is it possible for ByuN to lose his Blizzcon spot?
If sOs wins GSL, ByuN doesn't win the cross finals and doesn't qualify for KeSPA Cup, Dear qualifies for KeSPA Cup (or gets a better finish at KeSPA Cup than ByuN) and one of Classic/Patience reach the KeSPA Cup finals (or win if he qualifies), ByuN is out.
Soooooooooooooo... not that likely.
On September 07 2016 18:21 Eiltonn wrote: wtf? Maru is easily top 5 or better.
Nerchio said that after MyuNgSiK beat Maru in GSL, which raises the very valid point that outside of Proleague this year Maru has delivered virtually no evidence that what you say is true.
Wait since when cross finals offer WCS points? sOs winning, ByuN qualifying for Kespa Cup but having a worse finish than Dear, and Classic/Patience reaching the finals of a ro16 tourney filled with foreigners, doesn't seem that unlikely unfortunately :/. Too many protosses, it'll be very hard.
Can we even trust Nerchio if he didn't troll losing the ZvT he lost recently btw? :o
The winner of the cross finals gets 1000 points. That's why Stats is so far up in the rankings.
On September 07 2016 19:21 Poopi wrote: Okay so is it possible for ByuN to lose his Blizzcon spot?
If sOs wins GSL, ByuN doesn't win the cross finals and doesn't qualify for KeSPA Cup, Dear qualifies for KeSPA Cup (or gets a better finish at KeSPA Cup than ByuN) and one of Classic/Patience reach the KeSPA Cup finals (or win if he qualifies), ByuN is out.
Soooooooooooooo... not that likely.
On September 07 2016 18:21 Eiltonn wrote: wtf? Maru is easily top 5 or better.
Nerchio said that after MyuNgSiK beat Maru in GSL, which raises the very valid point that outside of Proleague this year Maru has delivered virtually no evidence that what you say is true.
Wait since when cross finals offer WCS points? sOs winning, ByuN qualifying for Kespa Cup but having a worse finish than Dear, and Classic/Patience reaching the finals of a ro16 tourney filled with foreigners, doesn't seem that unlikely unfortunately :/. Too many protosses, it'll be very hard.
Can we even trust Nerchio if he didn't troll losing the ZvT he lost recently btw? :o
The winner of the cross finals gets 1000 points. That's why Stats is so far up in the rankings.
Honestly im not sure if this point awarding system makes sense. Cross finals will be played out by the 4 people who already earned most points in that season and then you add more points on top of the winner of GSL/SSL being directly qualified. Basically this makes the difference between getting 3rd/4th and 2nd pretty huge
On September 07 2016 19:42 Poopi wrote: Okay so ByuN winning but sOs qualifying by winning cross finals + kespa cup would be the result I'll be hoping for.
How many foreigners will be able to qualify playing on KR server tho... Neeb is in KR already but will probably be invited among NA players.
NA has its own qualifier he can play which shouldn't be much of an issue for him. And I don't think a foreigner makes it through the global qualifiers. There are so many strong Koreans who aren't qualified and most people would have to play them cross server on KR. I'm not even sure if Neeb will be back in Korea in time for the KR server qualifiers from the Copa event this weekend, but even he'd have a tough time getting through.
The KR server qualifier brackets for this cup are gonna be abominations. Total deathbattles.
Wow when it says "8 invited players", only the KR are invited and then the EU/NA players have to battle the top 16 WCS EU/NA or something to make it? Weird.
Hopefully the KR qualifiers will be streamed, Liquipedia results won't be good enough for such Battle Royale.
On September 07 2016 19:52 Poopi wrote: Wow when it says "8 invited players", only the KR are invited and then the EU/NA players have to battle the top 16 WCS EU/NA or something to make it? Weird.
Hopefully the KR qualifiers will be streamed, Liquipedia results won't be good enough for such Battle Royale.
SpoTV's streaming KR qualifiers I wonder if they'll delay and try to stream all the qualifying matches
On September 07 2016 19:52 Poopi wrote: Wow when it says "8 invited players", only the KR are invited and then the EU/NA players have to battle the top 16 WCS EU/NA or something to make it? Weird.
Hopefully the KR qualifiers will be streamed, Liquipedia results won't be good enough for such Battle Royale.
SpoTV's streaming KR qualifiers I wonder if they'll delay and try to stream all the qualifying matches
They didn't do that for the last KeSPA Cup qualifiers. I think they'll mostly focus on matches that they deem interesting and go into qualifying matches as they can. I wonder if they have the same issues getting the games they want as community casters do during big WCS qualifiers.
Of course, as always, refreshing qualifier brackets every 30 seconds is half the fun.
I have to say, KeSPA Cup 2 last year was one of my favorite tournaments in all of 2015, I hope this one will be great, too.
On September 07 2016 13:50 lichter wrote: The fact that there were no other Global events isn't Blizzard's fault. Tournament organizers just didn't want to organize them.
And that's because Blizzard gave them absolutely zero incentive.
Didn't Blizzard even pay the organizers to exclude Koreans? Meaning: If they organized a WCS Event, they got money, if they did a global event, they didn't?
Yep, Global Events aren't supported by Blizzard. At least that's according to the WCS 2017 announcement.
Btw some people where walking about kespa cup being the last chance for drogo and so to get to blizzcon but it only gives points for the KOREAN WCS standings which are considered "Global", points for the foreign wcs rankings can only be obtained through region locked tourneys. Correct me if im wrong but im pretty sure So if lets say uthermal somehow wins this he will still not go to blizzcon.
On September 07 2016 22:42 IArako wrote: Btw some people where walking about kespa cup being the last chance for drogo and so to get to blizzcon but it only gives points for the KOREAN WCS standings which are considered "Global", points for the foreign wcs rankings can only be obtained through region locked tourneys. Correct me if im wrong but im pretty sure So if lets say uthermal somehow wins this he will still not go to blizzcon.
Thats not true.
In global events both koreans and foreigners can get point for their respective WCS regions. Koreans get WCS korea points, foreigners get WCS Circuit points.
This whole eco system around SC2 makes me sick. In my eyes its fucking ridiculous and dumb af. Like yes its a shame when there is not enough money in the foreign SC2 scene for the progamers to make a decent living off it. But no one is entitled to be living off of SC2. So if it doesnt work out for you, im sorry but to me the solution is not artificially pumping money in their scene while they dont really deserve it performance wise and thereby fucking up the Koreans who actually aint naturally better at SC2 they just train a lot more.
I dont know if you´re serious or trolling but I hope you realize that there would have been zero IEM´s and Dreamhacks this year if the old system where Koreans flew in and won was in place. Yes, zero. Like no major tournaments at all.
This whole eco system around SC2 makes me sick. In my eyes its fucking ridiculous and dumb af. Like yes its a shame when there is not enough money in the foreign SC2 scene for the progamers to make a decent living off it. But no one is entitled to be living off of SC2. So if it doesnt work out for you, im sorry but to me the solution is not artificially pumping money in their scene while they dont really deserve it performance wise and thereby fucking up the Koreans who actually aint naturally better at SC2 they just train a lot more.
I dont know if you´re serious or trolling but I hope you realize that there would have been zero IEM´s and Dreamhacks this year if the old system where Koreans flew in and won was in place. Yes, zero. Like no major tournaments at all.
Pretty sure that is some bullshit right there, don't think IEM or Dreamhack cares which region the players came from who won their prize money...
Not like they are gonna shut down operations because Koreans can fly over, that makes very little sense to me. Now if it was because in the new system Blizzard pumped money into them, then sure that makes sense but to say if Koreans flew over DH and IEM wouldn't happen is speculative, stupid, bullshit.
To kick the dead horse here, the problem with the new system is it punishes an entire region just because the other regions couldn't get their shit together. That is just flat out wrong to do, not to mention cutting off the viewers who want to see the best possible games and don't give a shit about whether the guy we're watching is white or "relatable" from seeing the highest tier games unless we stay up to ungodly hours or watch crappy vods.
More on topic, the hype is real for this. might be the first tournament I actually watch fully this year!
This whole eco system around SC2 makes me sick. In my eyes its fucking ridiculous and dumb af. Like yes its a shame when there is not enough money in the foreign SC2 scene for the progamers to make a decent living off it. But no one is entitled to be living off of SC2. So if it doesnt work out for you, im sorry but to me the solution is not artificially pumping money in their scene while they dont really deserve it performance wise and thereby fucking up the Koreans who actually aint naturally better at SC2 they just train a lot more.
I dont know if you´re serious or trolling but I hope you realize that there would have been zero IEM´s and Dreamhacks this year if the old system where Koreans flew in and won was in place. Yes, zero. Like no major tournaments at all.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
If you want to have more global events, then simply watch this tournament, hype it, get more people to watch it - its viewer success will be definitely taken into account when making further decisions.
I am not happy with the region lock either, but this year kinda proved the point Blizzard made at the beginning - right now, it's mainly just them who puts serious money on the line. Everyone was basically free to come and make non-locked events (the worst thing that could happen would be not giving WCS points) but almost noone did - and when HSC did it, they got no Koreans anyway, because there aren't now almost any easily available koreans during PL season.
On September 07 2016 01:55 Charoisaur wrote: Great to see that foreigners will lose the illusion that they now can magically compete with koreans even before blizzcon. Maybe we'll see nerchio losing 4:0 to hurricane and speed or something.
Nerchio losing to KR Zergs would be amusing.
It definitely would :-)
Not really, his ZvZ is shit atm, everyone knows that. If anything, him loosing in ZvT would be telling something. Unless it's against Maru. Everyone can loose to Maru.
Nerchio said Maru's overrated and not really that great. I'm gonna hold him to that.
Hahaha Nerchio is a great player, maye the best outside of Korea, but that's nonsense. Maru did better in proleague than anyone else (even Stats and herO tbh), and people say he did badly in the starleagues (which he did) but he did have the worst luck. I mean GSL S1 and SSL S2 he gets elimated by Zest, who at the time was invunerable to Terran. Other than that he's got taken out by Byul and Myunsgsik this year, which are both miles of any foreign players.
On topic though, yes Blizzard screwed over Koreans this year, they probably will next year unless they invest in some more KR tournaments. But this cup is something to hype over. The liquibets will be all over the shop with the foreigner fanboys coming in XD. Although if the foreigners can do well it increases the hype of Blizzcon a lot
On September 08 2016 01:02 opisska wrote: If you want to have more global events, then simply watch this tournament, hype it, get more people to watch it - its viewer success will be definitely taken into account when making further decisions.
I am not happy with the region lock either, but this year kinda proved the point Blizzard made at the beginning - right now, it's mainly just them who puts serious money on the line. Everyone was basically free to come and make non-locked events (the worst thing that could happen would be not giving WCS points) but almost noone did - and when HSC did it, they got no Koreans anyway, because there aren't now almost any easily available koreans during PL season.
You mean, except for China right? If only we could have had China sponsor more tournaments, we could have seen more Koreans.
That aside, I think the question is whether it is morally acceptable to do something morally unacceptable for the (potentially) greater good. Will region locking help or hurt foreigners in the long run or will it create more problems? How would the scene have done if there was limited/no region locking?
I think that when there was no region locking like in 2013/2014, foreigners definitely suffered.
Also, I really do hope that we can get some sick foreigners runs in this tournament (also I hope Zest can somehow get back in form).
Say what you want about Maru, but the kid, at his age, is one of the most consistent players the scene has ever seen. Few top finishes, sure. But so much consistency. He is the best proleague player for starcraft 2 and that helped Jinair win PL.
On September 08 2016 03:09 Diabolique wrote: I am just a stupid racist, but I want to see Nerchio getting destroyed by Maru and a few more cannon rushes from Zest!
Amen.
I don't think you're a racist, you just hate Nerchio
On September 08 2016 03:09 Diabolique wrote: I am just a stupid racist, but I want to see Nerchio getting destroyed by Maru and a few more cannon rushes from Zest!
Amen.
I don't think you're a racist, you just hate Nerchio
On September 08 2016 04:12 Thouhastmail wrote: We`ll see - maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe foreigners have improved their skills, just like uThermal said.
Improvement would mean they can consistently have good games against code A / low code S Koreans. Being matched against super-elite Koreans once in a blue moon won't tell much, although should be a lot of fun to watch.
On September 08 2016 04:12 Thouhastmail wrote: We`ll see - maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe foreigners have improved their skills, just like uThermal said.
Improvement would mean they can consistently have good games against code A / low code S Koreans. Being matched against super-elite Koreans once in a blue moon won't tell much, although should be a lot of fun to watch.
They already do that. Just look at foreigners in online cups like douyu cup, corsair cup, and the Olimoleague. There are Koreans in all of those cups, but there is no guarantee that they will win. As people have already pointed out, Neeb won an Olimoleague against high Code S level players.
Guru, Scarlett, Neeb, and Nerchio have consistently good games in online cups against not just Code A/Low Code S players but also fairly high level Code S players.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at . Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
On September 08 2016 04:12 Thouhastmail wrote: We`ll see - maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe foreigners have improved their skills, just like uThermal said.
Improvement would mean they can consistently have good games against code A / low code S Koreans. Being matched against super-elite Koreans once in a blue moon won't tell much, although should be a lot of fun to watch.
They already do that. Just look at foreigners in online cups like douyu cup, corsair cup, and the Olimoleague. There are Koreans in all of those cups, but there is no guarantee that they will win. As people have already pointed out, Neeb won an Olimoleague against high Code S level players.
Guru, Scarlett, Neeb, and Nerchio have consistently good games in online cups against not just Code A/Low Code S players but also fairly high level Code S players.
Online cups are an entirely different world from offline competition though.
On September 08 2016 04:12 Thouhastmail wrote: We`ll see - maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe foreigners have improved their skills, just like uThermal said.
Improvement would mean they can consistently have good games against code A / low code S Koreans. Being matched against super-elite Koreans once in a blue moon won't tell much, although should be a lot of fun to watch.
They already do that. Just look at foreigners in online cups like douyu cup, corsair cup, and the Olimoleague. There are Koreans in all of those cups, but there is no guarantee that they will win. As people have already pointed out, Neeb won an Olimoleague against high Code S level players.
Guru, Scarlett, Neeb, and Nerchio have consistently good games in online cups against not just Code A/Low Code S players but also fairly high level Code S players.
online tournaments have always been like that though, and then offline tournaments show a completely different story
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Sorry, but "If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore." could be related to balance, to patches, to prize money, to some other conditions / incentives or even to racism.
If I was an IEM manager responsible for the next season, I would be going to Blizzard and tell them: "If you don't change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore to run a region locked event with mediocre players."
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Sorry, but "If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore." could be related to balance, to patches, to prize money, to some other conditions / incentives or even to racism.
If I was an IEM manager responsible for the next season, I would be going to Blizzard and tell them: "If you don't change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore to run a region locked event with mediocre players."
IEM wants games with a global scene and a strong Western presence. That's where the money is. The large, global advertisers don't care about tiny sports that are only big in one country. If Starcraft has any hope of ever achieving that, it needs to build the foreign scene. You can't build the foreign scene when a handful of Korean players come in and hover up all the money and hog the spotlight. I know you short sighted lot are never going to see that, but Starcraft can't survive as a major esport in just Korea. Korea is a saturated market for SC. There is no growth there.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Sorry, but "If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore." could be related to balance, to patches, to prize money, to some other conditions / incentives or even to racism.
If I was an IEM manager responsible for the next season, I would be going to Blizzard and tell them: "If you don't change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore to run a region locked event with mediocre players."
IEM wants games with a global scene and a strong Western presence. That's where the money is. The large, global advertisers don't care about tiny sports that are only big in one country. If Starcraft has any hope of ever achieving that, it needs to build the foreign scene. You can't build the foreign scene when a handful of Korean players come in and hover up all the money and hog the spotlight. I know you short sighted lot are never going to see that, but Starcraft can't survive as a major esport in just Korea. Korea is a saturated market for SC. There is no growth there.
OK, I see. So you finished your day job cleaning toilets in the London underground and then you came to TL to write for 150th time some old theory that hundreds of WCS 2016 supporters have written before you without a single proof.
My answer before was to one guy, who claimed finally to have a proof that actually turned out not to be a proof, but being another "mystical theory". But you, the short sighted lot will catch to it and say: "It is the proof!!! Somebody said that something is not working well and needs to be changed! This means, it must be changed in the way, that we think is correct!"
Well, that is not a proof.
And to be honest, I do not think, that Nerchio winning it all, would help the global popularity of SC2. Does this mean, all Polish players will be banned? Because 40 millions Polish people do not have a sufficient economic power to be interesting for global advertisers? What about banning all players worldwide except let's say USA, Canada, Germany, China and France?
On September 08 2016 04:12 Thouhastmail wrote: We`ll see - maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe foreigners have improved their skills, just like uThermal said.
Improvement would mean they can consistently have good games against code A / low code S Koreans. Being matched against super-elite Koreans once in a blue moon won't tell much, although should be a lot of fun to watch.
They already do that. Just look at foreigners in online cups like douyu cup, corsair cup, and the Olimoleague. There are Koreans in all of those cups, but there is no guarantee that they will win. As people have already pointed out, Neeb won an Olimoleague against high Code S level players.
Guru, Scarlett, Neeb, and Nerchio have consistently good games in online cups against not just Code A/Low Code S players but also fairly high level Code S players.
online tournaments have always been like that though, and then offline tournaments show a completely different story
Actually they haven't. The cups in question have long been dominated by Koreans. 2014-2015 I think there was like 2 foreigner wins aside from Neeb. But now there are a lot more foreigners winning online than before. I looked at Nerchio, Guru, and Scarlett, and Scarlett was a bit of an anomaly because there is no 2015 online record. Scarlett won a bunch in 2014 and then went silent in 2015 and then started winning again in 2016.
But for Nerchio and Guru, they both definitely performed better overall in 2016 than in 2014/2015.
Also, Neeb won an Olimoleague in 2015/2016 but got 2nd once in 2016.
So perhaps the change isn't the huge, but it is definitely there, and I think that it is unwise to ignore this shift, however small. It is true that online performances do not always translate to offline victories, but look at Byun. He played in tons of online cups; and now he's one of the best players in the world.
My answer before was to one guy, who claimed finally to have a proof that actually turned out not to be a proof, but being another "mystical theory". But you, the short sighted lot will catch to it and say: "It is the proof!!! Somebody said that something is not working well and needs to be changed! This means, it must be changed in the way, that we think is correct!"
My mistake for not transcribing the whole segment, since you obviously didn´t listen to the interview. Incontrol was specifically talking about how koreans were dominating the western tournaments and that was the reason event partners wanted WCS to change. Im not even saying that this is the right or wrong path to take.
It's true that tournament organizers complained about Koreans dominating everything essentially killing growth in the foreign scene outside of the small group of hardcore fans. Tournament organizers wanted to grow the foreign scene because there is no money in supporting a scene dominated by one country. esports isn't centralized in Korea anymore. The only way to be financially viable is to cater to the biggest audience possible. And that isn't in Korea, obviously.
This is not some "mystical theory". It's the truth.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
What about Tastosis-casted foreigner games like at DH Montreal? Surely their infectious enthusiasum can get you into that. I mean, foreigner games are still very interesting dude.
Not to me, they aren't. I tried to watch, my interest just wasn't there. It's not uninteresting but then you get the itch of "I have better things to do"
This is me personally, obviously not everyone is going to watch Starcraft like I do. However I'm looking at the stance of ESL and Dreamhack, and comparing it to my own.
I think that overall, the entire problem boils down to foreigners just sucking at the game.
On September 08 2016 17:09 Incognoto wrote: Not to me, they aren't. I tried to watch, my interest just wasn't there. It's not uninteresting but then you get the itch of "I have better things to do"
This is me personally, obviously not everyone is going to watch Starcraft like I do. However I'm looking at the stance of ESL and Dreamhack, and comparing it to my own.
I think that overall, the entire problem boils down to foreigners just sucking at the game.
The last sentence actually sums it up very well. If foreigners were good at starcraft there would be no budget problems and no discussions every year.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
On September 08 2016 17:09 Incognoto wrote: Not to me, they aren't. I tried to watch, my interest just wasn't there. It's not uninteresting but then you get the itch of "I have better things to do"
This is me personally, obviously not everyone is going to watch Starcraft like I do. However I'm looking at the stance of ESL and Dreamhack, and comparing it to my own.
I think that overall, the entire problem boils down to foreigners just sucking at the game.
The last sentence actually sums it up very well. If foreigners were good at starcraft there would be no budget problems and no discussions every year.
Yeah and that goal can be achieved best by bitching about it on forums.
On one hand, I am pissed that I don't have the same selection of tournaments as in 2014 and I generally consider the whole concept of countries outdated and ugly and thus 2016 WCS doesn't really speak to me very well. On the other hand, what you say, is the paramount of ignorance. Giving foreigners a chance to actually get better was a big motivation for the region lock in the first place. Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good - and to do that you need money and you won't get that money if noone is willing to fund tournaments where you have some chance of doing well.
Don't get me wrong, I would definitely preffer in Blizzard manned up and poured even more money into the scene so that we can have everything, but I can't really blame a for-profit company for not doing that.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
From what information I have seen pertaining to WCS2016, it seems to me that there won't be many reasons to pay any airline tickets in the first place, if Blizzard didn't make arrangements with tournament organizers so that these tourneys actually happen. A part of these arrangement is Blizzard pouring money into it, another part is the region lock.
Do you really think that the teams are paying the players just out of sheer love? TL maybe, but even they need to get money somewhere and sponsors aren't going to give you anything if there is no exposure.
This is what you constantly fail to address: it's what tournament organizers wanted. What esport would there be without tournaments?
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Yes the partners of the events forced blizzard to change things because with the low vievership it wouldn't be worth it anymore to run sc2. However the approach of locking out foreigners failed. Viewership didn't get higher at all. So there's no reason not to remove the regionlock. Tournament organizers don't care one bit if it's Nerchio winning an event or Cure all they care for is the money that the tournament is generating.
On the other hand things like the shoutcraft event prove that it's in fact the koreans that bring the viewership.
On September 08 2016 20:48 opisska wrote: This is what you constantly fail to address: it's what tournament organizers wanted. What esport would there be without tournaments?
I'm saying that tournament organizers are idiots who aren't hosting good tournaments in the first place. I'm a viewer of said tournaments, guys like me make up a sizeable chunk of Starcraft viewers (I won't say we're a majority or anything). I think it's very important that people read up on what viewers of my category want.
Viewership numbers of Starcraft 2016 reflect what I'm saying as well. This has been the shittiest year of Starcraft, outside of Korea. The Korean scene has shown us some amazing games and stories, we have ASL coming up, it's great stuff.
It makes sense that western tournament organizers would want western players playing, for marketing, racism, what have you. They want white people winning tournaments, and they've told Blizzard as such. The issue is that western players are bad at the game. That's what it basically boils down to. I'm addressing that foreigners are bad and that tournament organizers are also bad to cater towards bad players. The entire scene is penalized because we have watered down welfare events so that we can get white people holding trophies.
I'm not saying I hold the solution or the holy grail of Starcraft tournaments. I am saying what I want as a viewer. I'm trying to pinpoint where the issues are.
If tournament organizers want to prevent the greatest players in the world from playing in their tournaments (and try to market their tournament as the greatest event in the world), then I'm going to say "your tournament is shit" and I'm not going to watch.
Why do tournament organizers want to prevent Koreans from playing? So that white people can win. Why can't white people win without protection? Because they're bad. In the end it just boils down to foreigners not being good at the game. There's your issue. Why? I have no clue. It's just reality though and the entire scene suffers because racist marketing requires white people holding trophies, not Asians. Sad reality.
Really though, most of this would be a non-issue if we could have the luxury of 50-50 between regional events and international ones. But we can't have that.
On September 08 2016 16:54 lichter wrote: It's true that tournament organizers complained about Koreans dominating everything essentially killing growth in the foreign scene outside of the small group of hardcore fans. Tournament organizers wanted to grow the foreign scene because there is no money in supporting a scene dominated by one country. esports isn't centralized in Korea anymore. The only way to be financially viable is to cater to the biggest audience possible. And that isn't in Korea, obviously.
This is not some "mystical theory". It's the truth.
Well but to have an esports event which pretty much depends on the viewers the most to be able to survive it does not matter at all what players you have, as long as you do have players. So it doesnt matter if theyre forigners or koreans. But for some reason that is way beyond my comprehension and always will be people prefer to watch foreigners over the arguably better koreans. Like this isnt something new there was always part of the scene who prefered A and the other prefred B. But now one of those parts is getting fucked over since its smaller. Most people seem to prefer watching worse player simply...because of their ethnicity?
And besides that SC2 is a RTS. The video games industry has changed, nowadays pretty much everyone is a gamer. Thus hardcore games like SC2 will be too hard to play for a lot of the people that are part of this industry. They prefer simpler games like mobas etc so the playerbase will be tiny comparatively and thus the viewership for tournaments wont be great either.
Both are pretty stupid trends imo (I cant stand watching a LoL match its utterly boring watching 10 guys farm minions for 20-30 minutes lol) that we probably cannot change tho, since the majority thinks/enjoy differently.
How hard is it to understand that the "casual" viewer wants to see people he can relate to? This isn't even about race which is why calling "racist" is fucking stupid, it's about language and it's about showmanship as well. It's basically the "reality tv" phenomenon, people want to cheer for players they like. Like for things OUTSIDE the actual game most of the time. This is where the term "faceless korean" stems from. Not because every korean is necessarily "faceless" (aka boring), but obviously it's a lot harder to show 'who you are' if you don't speak the international language: english. Just because TL consists of hardcore starcraft fans who don't care about this too much doesn't mean it's not a thing.
Look at the LCS, it is hugely popular because people like to cheer for their favorite players, players they know from various things like streaming, documentaries, etc Korean lol surely is more competitive and provides a higher lvl of gameplay, but it is a lot harder for a western fan to connect to the product regardless.
The problem with wcs being region locked NOW is that it's way too late to build a strong western following. It should have been there since the beginning to actually make a difference. The current WCS system being shit at actually building star players doesn't help either (no storylines, etc)
On September 08 2016 21:38 The_Red_Viper wrote: How hard is it to understand that the "casual" viewer wants to see people he can relate to? This isn't even about race which is why calling "racist" is fucking stupid, it's about language and it's about showmanship as well. It's basically the "reality tv" phenomenon, people want to cheer for players they like. Like for things OUTSIDE the actual game most of the time. This is where the term "faceless korean" stems from. Not because every korean is necessarily "faceless" (aka boring), but obviously it's a lot harder to show 'who you are' if you don't speak the international language: english. Just because TL consists of hardcore starcraft fans who don't care about this too much doesn't mean it's not a thing.
nice theory but viewer numbers didn't increase this year so sadly you have no proof for it. Also I'm not sure if Neeb has that much more showmanship than PartinG or MC.
Maybe you should have read and quoted the whole comment, i actually addressed this in my post as well.
Parting and MC are probably the koreans tournament organizers wouldn't have a problem with. But these are the exception and not the rule. Neeb is at least at their lvl of marketability (or around that lvl) because he speaks english. The random korean who wins dreamhack is not and he isn't entertaining either (to make up for it) You can call that a theory if you want to, general fan culture around movie stars/singers and even athletes kinda proves this though. (also look at any other succesful esport right now) I think it's common sense tbh.
I read your whole post but that doesn't change my opinion. Only because it's "general fan culture" doesn't necessarily mean it has to be true for sc2 as well. I remember in the past viewer numbers going crazy when there were games like PartinG vs Flash or Maru vs Life. Would foreign sc2 be similarly attracting if regionlock would have been there from the start? Maybe but I don't think so. People would still know that foreigners are way less skilled than koreans.
In basketball most people are more interested in the NBA than in their regional competitions too.
We've tried it the old way, allowing Koreans to dominate every tournament ever. It didn't grow viewership and overall it was plateauing (to put it nicely). You can't blame organizers and Blizz for trying something different in order to revive the game. Has it worked? Maybe not. But change takes time and growing interesting in local scenes and players takes time. Do we abandon this after one year to go back to a formula whose ceiling we already know? We could do that to satisfy the hardcore fans, yeah, but with no potential for growth, no way tournament organizers continue to support the game after a few years if that.
The fact of the matter is tournament organizers wanted this change and Blizzard had to try it. Cry all you want, but it was either this or few/no international tournaments. Without that, Blizzard drop support for the game. And if you think Korea is healthy enough without Blizzard's support, well, yeah. This was the only solution and cross your fingers it works next year.
In LoL everybody knows that koreans are the best, that doesn't stop fans from cheering for TSM (even though the gap might have closed this year, but look at the recent years, people loved to cheer for clearly worse players)
I don't quite see how NBA is a good example when it is exactly what i am asking for: easy marketability of players because they speak english and are also showmen outside of the actual game. Personally i don't really care for basketbal though, so maybe i am completely wrong here
It's funny that i argue this btw, because personally i don't care for foreigners at all
On September 08 2016 22:21 lichter wrote: We've tried it the old way, allowing Koreans to dominate every tournament ever. It didn't grow viewership and overall it was plateauing (to put it nicely). You can't blame organizers and Blizz for trying something different in order to revive the game. Has it worked? Maybe not. But change takes time and growing interesting in local scenes and players takes time. Do we abandon this after one year to go back to a formula whose ceiling we already know? We could do that to satisfy the hardcore fans, yeah, but with no potential for growth, no way tournament organizers continue to support the game after a few years if that.
The fact of the matter is tournament organizers wanted this change and Blizzard had to try it. Cry all you want, but it was either this or few/no international tournaments. Without that, Blizzard drop support for the game. And if you think Korea is healthy enough without Blizzard's support, well, yeah. This was the only solution and cross your fingers it works next year.
"This was the only solution and cross your fingers it works next year." Spoiler alert: it won't. I'm sorry but if this year viewers weren't particularly interested in watching foreigner-only tournaments I don't see why it would be different next year.
On September 08 2016 22:25 The_Red_Viper wrote: In LoL everybody knows that koreans are the best, that doesn't stop fans from cheering for TSM (even though the gap might have closed this year, but look at the recent years, people loved to cheer for clearly worse players)
I don't quite see how NBA is a good example when it is exactly what i am asking for: easy marketability of players because they speak english and are also showmen outside of the actual game. Personally i don't really care for basketbal though, so maybe i am completely wrong here
It's funny that i argue this btw, because personally i don't care for foreigners at all
Wtf is how is the NBA the perfect example. They are easily marketable in their home environment. They are -according to your theory- not as good marketable in Asia or Africa or S. America and yet the NBA is undisputably the most watched Basketball league all around the world.
And the koreans dont offer showmanship/have no personality thing is just the same bs argument that has been around forever. Sure they dont speak a lot of English and sure that sucks but this is why tourneys have tranalators and stuff
On September 08 2016 22:21 lichter wrote: We've tried it the old way, allowing Koreans to dominate every tournament ever. It didn't grow viewership and overall it was plateauing (to put it nicely). You can't blame organizers and Blizz for trying something different in order to revive the game. Has it worked? Maybe not. But change takes time and growing interesting in local scenes and players takes time. Do we abandon this after one year to go back to a formula whose ceiling we already know? We could do that to satisfy the hardcore fans, yeah, but with no potential for growth, no way tournament organizers continue to support the game after a few years if that.
The fact of the matter is tournament organizers wanted this change and Blizzard had to try it. Cry all you want, but it was either this or few/no international tournaments. Without that, Blizzard drop support for the game. And if you think Korea is healthy enough without Blizzard's support, well, yeah. This was the only solution and cross your fingers it works next year.
It's a full circle.
If this format doesn't work and the previous formats did not work, then it's simply a case of foreigners being too bad at the game for actual international events to be worth it.
That, or Starcraft is just an uninteresting game. That's going into the daed gaem circle-jerk which I think isn't worth discussing, really.
We've tried it the old way, allowing Koreans to dominate every tournament ever.
Have we ever tried a mix of international events and regional ones? That's close to what we have this year, but neither Dreamhack nor ESL are going the extra mile to put out even one international event. Kespa is, however. If only there had been a little more coordination between Kespa and Copa America.
If we're using viewership as a metric, then how are we happy with how things are currently? Viewership for "international" events aren't really growing, they're on a decline.
I also believe, if you want "growth" of viewership numbers, then you need a growth of the player base. I don't think that's happening, mostly because Starcraft is by nature a tough game to play. The co-op things that Blizzard is doing are a good start, but I think the real "hope" is the big redesign which is in the works. Call me crazy but I think Blizzard are smarter than they appear. I think that they're reworking the game to make it more fun to play and make it a long-lasting title. More players means more viewers, that's pretty much how CS:GO, LOL and DOTA are taking the top eSports spots.
Watering down tournaments and inserting welfare measures are stop-gap solutions at best, which to me even seem counter-productive. They don't address the fundamental problems. I think that if the scene is reliant on bandages like these welfare measures of penalizing the best players for being good at the game (I mean, these are competitions we're watching, not reality TV shows), then it's too unhealthy to be sustainable to begin with.
That's looking at it wrong though. I think that Starcraft is in a down-sized but still healthy state. I don't think that ESL or Dreamhack are doing things which are healthy for the scene in the long run. What might be healthy is a compromise between international and regional events, but we can't have that because, as you say:
allowing Koreans to dominate every tournament ever
Aka, we want white people to hold trophies. ALL trophies. If only they were good enough to win those trophies legitimately..
The problem with wcs being region locked NOW is that it's way too late to build a strong western following. It should have been there since the beginning to actually make a difference. The current WCS system being shit at actually building star players doesn't help either (no storylines, etc).
Precisely. The perverse effect of protecting foreigners is that when they win something, their win just isn't as legitimate. It's like Demuslim winning the UK/Ireland/Iceland qualifiers for WESG. Nobody bats an eye because we know there's no one in that region who can compete with Demuslim. But he's the BEST player from that region, by far! Same with Stephano, who decided to cash in that easy money / qualification in the African qualifiers. We're not exactly chalking up him being the best African player in the world by a landslide as something amazing.
I'm sure that ESL and so on understand this, hence I'm pointing out that their solution to the problem is clumsy and possibly counter-productive (aka look at viewership).
On September 08 2016 22:25 The_Red_Viper wrote: In LoL everybody knows that koreans are the best, that doesn't stop fans from cheering for TSM (even though the gap might have closed this year, but look at the recent years, people loved to cheer for clearly worse players)
I don't quite see how NBA is a good example when it is exactly what i am asking for: easy marketability of players because they speak english and are also showmen outside of the actual game. Personally i don't really care for basketbal though, so maybe i am completely wrong here
It's funny that i argue this btw, because personally i don't care for foreigners at all
Wtf is how is the NBA the perfect example. They are easily marketable in their home environment. They are -according to your theory- not as good marketable in Asia or Africa or S. America and yet the NBA is undisputably the most watched Basketball league all around the world.
And the koreans dont offer showmanship/have no personality thing is just the same bs argument that has been around forever. Sure they dont speak a lot of English and sure that sucks but this is why tourneys have tranalators and stuff
No they are easily marketable PERIOD. English is the global language, which is why we all speak english here on TL. TL wouldn't be what it is now if it did only allow spanish as a spoken language. It's a bad example.
It's no bs argument at all, it's the truth. The random korean isn't marketable in the western scene. Just because you are hardcore enough (and thus post on TL) to care for korean esports doesn't mean it's the "normal" thing to do. It's really not that hard to understand tbh. Yet people on here never seem to get it. If you don't think that marketability OUTSIDE the game is important you imo fail at common sense. It's no coincidence that good looking progamers usually also have more fans than players simlarly skilled (but not as good looking) At the end of the day esports is entertainment, every little trick helps here to boost your value. The player outside the game matters a lot, that is the truth.
Precisely. The perverse effect of protecting foreigners is that when they win something, their win just isn't as legitimate. It's like Demuslim winning the UK/Ireland/Iceland qualifiers for WESG. Nobody bats an eye because we know there's no one in that region who can compete with Demuslim. But he's the BEST player from that region, by far! Same with Stephano, who decided to cash in that easy money / qualification in the African qualifiers. We're not exactly chalking up him being the best African player in the world by a landslide as something amazing.
I'm sure that ESL and so on understand this, hence I'm pointing out that their solution to the problem is clumsy and possibly counter-productive (aka look at viewership).
Well yeah i agree that it is too late now. At this point most people watching are actually pretty hardcore regardless. In sc2's case it's also hard because there aren't a lot of people playing the game either. A lot of problems and no real solutions to fix it. So yeah i am with you, for this specific scenario region locking didn't help to make sc2 grow, but nothing really would i think. First you would need more actual players, aka potential viewers.
Even if you're right and koreans aren't as marketable in the western scene I don't think this has much to do with the current state of sc2. the game just has to few players to attract high viewer numbers. regionlock/no regionlock doesn't really make a difference there.
I think it even has the highest rate of viewers per players out of all the esports so saying regionlock is the reason for low viewer numbers is pretty wrong.
On September 08 2016 22:25 The_Red_Viper wrote: In LoL everybody knows that koreans are the best, that doesn't stop fans from cheering for TSM (even though the gap might have closed this year, but look at the recent years, people loved to cheer for clearly worse players)
I don't quite see how NBA is a good example when it is exactly what i am asking for: easy marketability of players because they speak english and are also showmen outside of the actual game. Personally i don't really care for basketbal though, so maybe i am completely wrong here
It's funny that i argue this btw, because personally i don't care for foreigners at all
Wtf is how is the NBA the perfect example. They are easily marketable in their home environment. They are -according to your theory- not as good marketable in Asia or Africa or S. America and yet the NBA is undisputably the most watched Basketball league all around the world.
And the koreans dont offer showmanship/have no personality thing is just the same bs argument that has been around forever. Sure they dont speak a lot of English and sure that sucks but this is why tourneys have tranalators and stuff
No they are easily marketable PERIOD. English is the global language, which is why we all speak english here on TL. TL wouldn't be what it is now if it did only allow spanish as a spoken language. It's a bad example.
It's no bs argument at all, it's the truth. The random korean isn't marketable in the western scene. Just because you are hardcore enough (and thus post on TL) to care for korean esports doesn't mean it's the "normal" thing to do. It's really not that hard to understand tbh. Yet people on here never seem to get it. If you don't think that marketability OUTSIDE the game is important you imo fail at common sense. It's no coincidence that good looking progamers usually also have more fans than players simlarly skilled (but not as good looking) At the end of the day esports is entertainment, every little trick helps here to boost your value. The player outside the game matters a lot, that is the truth.
.
Just because u say "PERIOD" or this is the truth doesnt make it an universal truth just saying. And besides that how can you not get my point. They are not generally more marketable. They are in the US and maybe in parts of Europe. Not everybody does speak English at all just because you and me do. There are lots of Spanish speaking people and Mandarin and Hindustani also have lots of people speaking it. And on the internet places dont matter (which is a beautiful thing) at all. This is the potential to break up with stupid tradional views. No one is the by far best to market entity when people all over the world can watch and be a part of it. Those people who you claim to be the "normal" case, and you do derive them from us, our ethnicity and western places of living, are just one case among many others. Its not really that hard to understand tbh.
I am not saying that koreans aren't marketable per se btw, this isn't about race at all. (which is why these "racist" comments are stupid) The average korean progamer who doesn't speak any english and also isn't very entertaining outside the game with other means (like MC or Hyun or maybe even Parting) is the thing i am talking about here. Polt being ahuge fan favorite is no coincidence. He is good, speaks english, he actively tries to connect to a western audience. Stephano being a huge fan favorite? He obviously speaks english and is hilarious outside of the game. This stuff matters a lot, it's NOT only about actual skill.
On September 08 2016 22:25 The_Red_Viper wrote: In LoL everybody knows that koreans are the best, that doesn't stop fans from cheering for TSM (even though the gap might have closed this year, but look at the recent years, people loved to cheer for clearly worse players)
I don't quite see how NBA is a good example when it is exactly what i am asking for: easy marketability of players because they speak english and are also showmen outside of the actual game. Personally i don't really care for basketbal though, so maybe i am completely wrong here
It's funny that i argue this btw, because personally i don't care for foreigners at all
Wtf is how is the NBA the perfect example. They are easily marketable in their home environment. They are -according to your theory- not as good marketable in Asia or Africa or S. America and yet the NBA is undisputably the most watched Basketball league all around the world.
And the koreans dont offer showmanship/have no personality thing is just the same bs argument that has been around forever. Sure they dont speak a lot of English and sure that sucks but this is why tourneys have tranalators and stuff
No they are easily marketable PERIOD. English is the global language, which is why we all speak english here on TL. TL wouldn't be what it is now if it did only allow spanish as a spoken language. It's a bad example.
It's no bs argument at all, it's the truth. The random korean isn't marketable in the western scene. Just because you are hardcore enough (and thus post on TL) to care for korean esports doesn't mean it's the "normal" thing to do. It's really not that hard to understand tbh. Yet people on here never seem to get it. If you don't think that marketability OUTSIDE the game is important you imo fail at common sense. It's no coincidence that good looking progamers usually also have more fans than players simlarly skilled (but not as good looking) At the end of the day esports is entertainment, every little trick helps here to boost your value. The player outside the game matters a lot, that is the truth.
.
Just because u say "PERIOD" or this is the truth doesnt make it an universal truth just saying. And besides that how can you not get my point. They are not generally more marketable. They are in the US and maybe in parts of Europe. Not everybody does speak English at all just because you and me do. There are lots of Spanish speaking people and Mandarin and Hindustani also have lots of people speaking it. And on the internet places dont matter (which is a beautiful thing) at all. This is the potential to break up with stupid tradional views. No one is the by far best to market entity when people all over the world can watch and be a part of it. Those people who you claim to be the "normal" case, and you do derive them from us, our ethnicity and western places of living, are just one case among many others. Its not really that hard to understand tbh.
I talk about why something is more popular. The general entertainment industry shows all of that stuff fairly well. You can either accept that it's a proven concept at this point or you can deny it. I don't really care anymore. It's not about being morally "the best". It's about a working system. If you like it or not doesn't matter for this particular topic. Do i think hollywood movies are necessarily the best movies? No. Are these movies more accessible than foreign ones, possibly without an english dub? Hell yes. So yeah let's talk about the asian market where nobody of us two has any idea about. When we are talking about viewership we are probably talking about twitch viewers, mainly coming from the western audience. That's why i also talk about the western audience. It's really not that hard to understand
On September 08 2016 23:08 The_Red_Viper wrote: I am not saying that koreans aren't marketable per se btw, this isn't about race at all. (which is why these "racist" comments are stupid) The average korean progamer who doesn't speak any english and also isn't very entertaining outside the game with other means (like MC or Hyun or maybe even Parting) is the thing i am talking about here. Polt being ahuge fan favorite is no coincidence. He is good, speaks english, he actively tries to connect to a western audience. Stephano being a huge fan favorite? He obviously speaks english and is hilarious outside of the game. This stuff matters a lot, it's NOT only about actual skill.
but MC, Hyun and PartinG get punished the same way as the other "faceless" koreans which is why the "racist" comments kinda make sense. they get punished for the country they are born in despite being different than most other koreans.
On September 08 2016 23:08 The_Red_Viper wrote: I am not saying that koreans aren't marketable per se btw, this isn't about race at all. (which is why these "racist" comments are stupid) The average korean progamer who doesn't speak any english and also isn't very entertaining outside the game with other means (like MC or Hyun or maybe even Parting) is the thing i am talking about here. Polt being ahuge fan favorite is no coincidence. He is good, speaks english, he actively tries to connect to a western audience. Stephano being a huge fan favorite? He obviously speaks english and is hilarious outside of the game. This stuff matters a lot, it's NOT only about actual skill.
but MC, Hyun and PartinG get punished the same way as the other "faceless" koreans which is why the "racist" comments kinda make sense. they get punished for the country they are born in despite being different than most other koreans.
Besides that to consider their origin in the first place is stupid and makes no sense. To me there are billions of faceless foreigners who i could not match their faces with the according nicknames lol
I will stop now though, TL is just too hardcore into korean sc2 to even discuss these things here. Which is (as i said before) funny because i couldn't care less about foreign sc2 myself. That doesn't mean that i am unable to grasp the concept though -.-
On September 08 2016 22:48 The_Red_Viper wrote: So yeah i am with you, for this specific scenario region locking didn't help to make sc2 grow, but nothing really would i think. First you would need more actual players, aka potential viewers.
This is really the linchpin of any potential "fix" if you ask me.
That's why I'm super hopeful, because what Blizzard is doing right now is releasing a ton of co-op content, which apparently is quite successful. They're looking into some fundamental re-designs of the game itself, as well. If they're looking to make Starcraft a fun game before making it a successful esport, then I think that things are going to go swimmingly.
They'd be redoing what they did with Hearthstone, which is getting active new content, new game modes, etc.
I think if we want to be perfectly fair and honest with ourselves, we need to realize that Starcraft 2 and Brood War were both the precursors of eSports in the first place. Korean Brood War was the first eSport, Blizzard realized the potential and tried to recreate that at a global level with Starcraft 2. Their goal is something which was somewhat unprecedented, you have to admit, right?
Starcraft 2 is the game which took on the brunt of the R&D around making a successful esport. You can kind of see it in how the game was designed and how WCS was formed. I think that Blizzard are in the process of applying the lessons which have been learned before: they're making Starcraft 2 a game which is fundamentally fun to play, rather than being a spectator's game. This means more copies of Starcraft are sold and there's a higher player base, which translates to a higher viewer base.
Which is why the daedgaem circle jerk is asinine. You can see how the game is getting more and more fun, how Blizzard is doing things better and better. The crux is, in my opinion, the LOTV redesign which is in store. I'm super pumped for this.
The growth isn't quite there yet, but I think it's coming. I do however want to point out that the artificial welfare measures which are being requested by ESL, Dreamhack and foreigners are more detrimental than beneficial to the scene. Laugh all you want, but Kespa and Afreeca are doing a lot of good for Starcraft right now.
All in all, 2016 was a quirky year for Starcraft. I really enjoyed the Korean scene this year, especially the BW resurgence. Hopefully in 2017 things are even better and we get some growth.
On September 08 2016 23:19 The_Red_Viper wrote: I will stop now though, TL is just too hardcore into korean sc2 to even discuss these things here. Which is (as i said before) funny because i couldn't care less about foreign sc2 myself. That doesn't mean that i am unable to grasp the concept though -.-
Actually we are having a discussion here. You just seem to have difficulty coping with the fact that some people did not take your "truths" for granted just like you didnt take ours. Discussion doesnt necessarily lead to both sides agreeing on something. This does not mean that either opinion is wrong. But i guess im just too hardcore to be reasonable.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
I would say that the best foreigners are easily Code S level. The reason I say that is because the players who were beaten in Code A are people like Bunny, Trust, jjakji, Symbol, Stork, Sorry, Billowy, Armani, Pet, and Reality, These are all players that I think the top foreigners can beat or have already beaten.
The problem is that the people who come over to foreigner tournaments are generally not the low Code S/low Code Korean players; they are the high level ones or people who have won GSLs. So it's not that the foreign scene is so terrible, it's just that they cannot yet compete against the very highest level of Korean competition. Perhaps if only lower level Koreans came over, foreigners might have a better chance against them.
And you're right. Proleague is really something special because you get to cheer for more than one person. You cheer for the group (somewhat regardless of race), kind of like when I cheer for Canadians in SC2 despite being a heavy Protoss fan.
And yes, sometimes there are bad Korean games because players play strategies that will win (or fail horribly) rather than just safe builds. But at the same time, some high level players play games that are just bad. And it's not that one person made one or a few mistakes and then lost, it's that the entire game was riddled with errors by both players. And there have been those in the Korean scene. I'm thinking like with Patience in the SSL or MyuNgSiK in the GSL. These games are not really cutting edge because it's more like two people hammering at each other with blunt knives.
As for sick nerd chills, I guess I would ask if you get nerd chills while watching Code A/low Code S players duking it out. Your assertion that you cannot see foreigner games as amazing is revealing because I see no reason why foreigners cannot, on occasion, produce some amazing games. It's not as if I'm watching WCS Summer and being like, "This is the best starcraft ever!" But this does not preclude the possibility that I watch or even expect some very good starcraft play.
Also, there are actually four/five (including Blizzcon) global events this year. WCA and WESG are Chinese-sponsored global tournaments. Oh, and Copa is being called "WCS Copa Intercontinental," so that's why...
In any case, I don't think it's cheap to say that Koreans get more opportunities to practice because there are actually competitive teams and coaches in Korea. I do not believe that any foreign teams are set up in the same way. It's like how it's easier to get better in hockey in Canada versus hockey in China because hockey is one of the most popular sports here. Yes, talent does make a difference, and you still have to work hard, but you will not have the same benefit of working in an environment that actively fosters competitive play at the highest level.
Ultimately, I definitely respect your reasoning to support Korean SC2 and less so the system that Blizzard brought in. It's not that you don't want foreigners to do well, you just don't want to have mainly foreigner only tournaments at the expense of the better Starcraft 2 scene.
But that being said, I think you should take a step back and look at a high level foreign match and then look at a Code S match without any top 16 Koreans in it and ask yourself if they are so radically different. Perhaps they are on another level, but it seems to me that if Koreans really were on another level to even the best foreigners, then foreigners would not have much chance going against Koreans online. If the difference is that great, then even if Koreans are not playing as hard, they should still win.
On September 08 2016 23:19 The_Red_Viper wrote: I will stop now though, TL is just too hardcore into korean sc2 to even discuss these things here. Which is (as i said before) funny because i couldn't care less about foreign sc2 myself. That doesn't mean that i am unable to grasp the concept though -.-
I think you´re exactly right. Random guys who take trophies and can´t be arsed to say anything more than "I will try harder for my fans" are terrible for storylines. It´s just that it´s always been like this in Starcraft. I believe this is why people go absolutely crazy for foreigner who are able to compete with Koreans like Stephano or Scarlett. They´re so much more relatable, and sports without emotional attachment will never attract "the masses". I mean, trying to feel something for a guy like Stats, how much more desperate could one get?
And another thing that makes Korean Starcraft much more attractive to me and I assume a couple of other people:
The format. With GSL/SSL/PL I get a chunk of 2-4 hours on one day. I can watch that and stay informed. But weekend tournaments have just way too much playtime cramped into a weekend. I loved to watch that all day when I didn´t have a job. But now, I don´t watch any of it, because it´s way too much effort time-wise to really get into it. But of course, the weekend tournament are the only possible format for everyone outside Seoul. Doesn´t make it better, though.
I agree with the gist of your post, I see the sense in what you say and you're right that I'm perhaps unfairly assuming that foreigner players are bad; they're bad compared to the absolute cream of the cream. I should regardless still be interested in watching said cream play.
I'll just nit pick at a few details, otherwise I agree with the gist of it.
Your assertion that you cannot see foreigner games as amazing is revealing because I see no reason why foreigners cannot, on occasion, produce some amazing games. It's not as if I'm watching WCS Summer and being like, "This is the best starcraft ever!" But this does not preclude the possibility that I watch or even expect some very good starcraft play.
Yeah, I can see the sense in that. I'm a casual fan and not a good player, so maybe I can't pick up on quality as well as others. I still sense that
Also, there are actually four/five (including Blizzcon) global events this year. WCA and WESG are Chinese-sponsored global tournaments. Oh, and Copa is being called "WCS Copa Intercontinental," so that's why...
I didn't know that Korea was in fact not a part of the Asian continent, though I'll be sure to brush on my geography.
I don't include Blizzcon as a global event because it's not open, players are invited based on WCS points which is fallacy to me since not everyone gets the same opportunities. I'm talking about open events when I bitch on the forums, which Blizzcon is not.
Ultimately, I definitely respect your reasoning to support Korean SC2 and less so the system that Blizzard brought in. It's not that you don't want foreigners to do well, you just don't want to have mainly foreigner only tournaments at the expense of the better Starcraft 2 scene.
Yes, that's mostly it. I attach importance to actual open events too. To me there's a lot of hype in seeing a tournament where anyone can sign up. Screw the visa / resident issues, the borderline racist "we want white people holding trophies because that's what marketing is for", the region locking, qualifiers, rule books, and other stuff. I really love the events where it's simple: you can sign up as long as you play Starcraft. Open events are my favorite, I really think that anything can happen in those. Hence my lamenting that we get less and less of them.
But that being said, I think you should take a step back and look at a high level foreign match and then look at a Code S match without any top 16 Koreans in it and ask yourself if they are so radically different. Perhaps they are on another level, but it seems to me that if Koreans really were on another level to even the best foreigners, then foreigners would not have much chance going against Koreans online. If the difference is that great, then even if Koreans are not playing as hard, they should still win.
You're right on this one: you could even take it a step further and say that those top 16 are able to effectively siphon the entire scene of its cash if they could. Arguably they deserve it, since they're at the top of the game. Surely they don't. What I would have loved to see, for example, is just one for Korea in WCS Copa. That would have been great. Unfortunately we can't have that due to WCS points and the system.
On September 08 2016 23:03 Charoisaur wrote: Even if you're right and koreans aren't as marketable in the western scene I don't think this has much to do with the current state of sc2. the game just has to few players to attract high viewer numbers. regionlock/no regionlock doesn't really make a difference there.
I think it even has the highest rate of viewers per players out of all the esports so saying regionlock is the reason for low viewer numbers is pretty wrong.
Pretty much this, all the region lock this year did was hurt viewership numbers or kept them stagnant because the people who wanted to see the best players refused to watch, offsetting the numbers that came in.
Or if you compare it to what the championships replaced, the WCS season finals. More than half the audience found something better to do.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
I would say that the best foreigners are easily Code S level. The reason I say that is because the players who were beaten in Code A are people like Bunny, Trust, jjakji, Symbol, Stork, Sorry, Billowy, Armani, Pet, and Reality, These are all players that I think the top foreigners can beat or have already beaten.
not sure about that. maybe foreigners have improved this year (online results are different than offline results) but last year some of the worst koreans could still dominate foreign tournaments. wiki.teamliquid.net wiki.teamliquid.net
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
I would say that the best foreigners are easily Code S level. The reason I say that is because the players who were beaten in Code A are people like Bunny, Trust, jjakji, Symbol, Stork, Sorry, Billowy, Armani, Pet, and Reality, These are all players that I think the top foreigners can beat or have already beaten.
not sure about that. maybe foreigners have improved this year (online results are different than offline results) but last year some of the worst koreans could still dominate foreign tournaments. wiki.teamliquid.net wiki.teamliquid.net
And that's why I'm saying that the foreigners have improved this year. Also, the Asus one actually proves my point because drogo won against lower level Koreans, and he also won versus Code A Koreans. Yes, he lost to Losira (Code S), but a 4-2 score isn't bad, and I don't really think that drogo was the best foreigner last year either. So when you have lower level Koreans and Code A level Koreans instead of top 16/8 Code S Koreans, foreigners don't do so poorly.
As for Gfinity, yes, it is Code A players winning against the best foreigners. However, uThermal and Lilbow both won a game against their opponents, so I don't really consider this "domination" by Koreans seeing as there were three Koreans in an 8 person tournament (so already really small) and one of the Koreans was beaten, and the other two Koreans won 2-1 against their respective opponents.
Also, there are actually four/five (including Blizzcon) global events this year. WCA and WESG are Chinese-sponsored global tournaments. Oh, and Copa is being called "WCS Copa Intercontinental," so that's why...
I didn't know that Korea was in fact not a part of the Asian continent, though I'll be sure to brush on my geography.
I don't include Blizzcon as a global event because it's not open, players are invited based on WCS points which is fallacy to me since not everyone gets the same opportunities. I'm talking about open events when I bitch on the forums, which Blizzcon is not.
Ultimately, I definitely respect your reasoning to support Korean SC2 and less so the system that Blizzard brought in. It's not that you don't want foreigners to do well, you just don't want to have mainly foreigner only tournaments at the expense of the better Starcraft 2 scene.
Yes, that's mostly it. I attach importance to actual open events too. To me there's a lot of hype in seeing a tournament where anyone can sign up. Screw the visa / resident issues, the borderline racist "we want white people holding trophies because that's what marketing is for", the region locking, qualifiers, rule books, and other stuff. I really love the events where it's simple: you can sign up as long as you play Starcraft. Open events are my favorite, I really think that anything can happen in those. Hence my lamenting that we get less and less of them.
But that being said, I think you should take a step back and look at a high level foreign match and then look at a Code S match without any top 16 Koreans in it and ask yourself if they are so radically different. Perhaps they are on another level, but it seems to me that if Koreans really were on another level to even the best foreigners, then foreigners would not have much chance going against Koreans online. If the difference is that great, then even if Koreans are not playing as hard, they should still win.
You're right on this one: you could even take it a step further and say that those top 16 are able to effectively siphon the entire scene of its cash if they could. Arguably they deserve it, since they're at the top of the game. Surely they don't. What I would have loved to see, for example, is just one for Korea in WCS Copa. That would have been great. Unfortunately we can't have that due to WCS points and the system.
Interestingly, I have to say that Open events were always my least favourite events because they were usually dreamhack events, (and my favourite Protoss Koreans somehow usually lost at these ones...), because the fewer number of games in an IEM meant that all the matches I wanted to see were casted. Also, I think that the level of Koreans was higher in the IEM, but that's just my opinion...
And yeah, I was quite disappointed when I found out that all the IEMs would no longer have herO, and the top 16 definitely deserves to win the most money, which, through this system, they may not. (Though, WCA and WESG have yet to be played).
So we want to see the best Koreans, but we can't see them unless we also have really good foreigners, and we can't see those until their skill equalizes. I agree with what was said here in that Blizzard's attempts may unfortunately be too little too late. They never implemented a system that guaranteed some amount of income for foreigners. If they aren't successful, then they cannot sustain themselves playing SC2.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
I would say that the best foreigners are easily Code S level. The reason I say that is because the players who were beaten in Code A are people like Bunny, Trust, jjakji, Symbol, Stork, Sorry, Billowy, Armani, Pet, and Reality, These are all players that I think the top foreigners can beat or have already beaten.
not sure about that. maybe foreigners have improved this year (online results are different than offline results) but last year some of the worst koreans could still dominate foreign tournaments. wiki.teamliquid.net wiki.teamliquid.net
And that's why I'm saying that the foreigners have improved this year. Also, the Asus one actually proves my point because drogo won against lower level Koreans, and he also won versus Code A Koreans. Yes, he lost to Losira (Code S), but a 4-2 score isn't bad, and I don't really think that drogo was the best foreigner last year either. So when you have lower level Koreans and Code A level Koreans instead of top 16/8 Code S Koreans, foreigners don't do so poorly.
I was more referring to the fact that B4 and Keen (2 Prime players who couldn't win a single map in proleague) and apocalypse (who?) got to the playoffs ahead of Snute, Lilbow, Bunny (the 3 top foreigners at the time) Uthermal and Mlord.
Im not trolling and i dont know how you got that notion. I may be exaggerating and this is because this subject is really bugging me. I have no idea how you come to think that without the region lock there wouldnt be any events at all. You cannot deliver proof for such a statement and therefor its just speculative bullshit. Besides that i didnt watch IEM, Dreamhack etc this year since i wasnt interested in these. So from my limited perspective there were no such events this year.
It´s been said and hinted at several occasions. The most recent and perhaps most freely spoken by Incontrol just a couple of days ago at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAN8qUY67ns. Start listening at ~59 minutes. Or I can write his exact words here:
"Alot of the partners of event went to Blizzard in 2015 and 2016 and said; If you dont change how things are going we´re not gonna run Starcraft. Its not worth it for us anymore."
I don´t how you can get a clearer message than that.
Well then that basically means it's the death of the foreigner Starcraft scene because let's not kid ourselves, outside of Korea this was a shit, uninteresting year for Starcraft, at least for me personally. I'm not really bothered to watch Polt beat foreigners, or watch Polt lose to himself when he plays against foreigners. It's not interesting.
Obscure foreigners whose face I can't even picture (is that the definition of faceless?) are winning tournaments which I'm not even bothering to watch in the first place. If I want to know what Nerchio, Neeb or Showtime look like, I need to google it. I'm mostly familiar with the Korean players who are all around PL, GSL, ASL and S2L. I recognize more readily the faces of players like Organ, Shuttle, Sharp, etc. as well.
Sounds harsh, but that's how it is. Berate me all you want, but the only Starcraft I'm ever going to bother allocating my limited free time to watching is the kind being played at the highest level of cutting edge. I'm going to watch Brood War VODs and enjoy them (mostly due to the infectious enthusiasm from Tastosis).
Nope. That's how I see it.
Realistically speaking, there should have been regional events from the get-go. A mix of regional events for every region and some international events as well. That way foreigners could have had their "growth", which is basically them practicing the game 4 hours a day, sucking at it, but still winning things because everyone sucks. I don't know how some fans would identify to that, but if they do, well whatever.
I don't know. I watched a Nerchio vs Neeb bo5 in some foreign tournament which was way more high level than a proleague ZvP between two decent KR players. Like after watching Nerchio vs Neeb I thought this korean ZvP was too shitty to watch, I even felt like the zerg was matchfixing seeing how painfully bad it was.
Maybe you just don't have a clue about what is high level starcraft and what is not, so you just watch korean starcraft because on average it's better, but you miss out quite a lot doing that.
To be quite frank, I'm sure that top foreigners are legitimately good at the game. I'd say that the best foreigners are probably close to Code S level.
That said, maybe you're confusing "high level" and "close match". I don't know, but I'm not really going to assume that the foreigner scene is worth a damn until we get foreigners doing well. The foreigner scene is a giant meme to me, with Lilbow holding the meme conch until his successor appears next Blizzcon. When we get foreigners who take Koreans to town at their own game, let's talk. In the mean time it's objectively true that ESL and Dreamhack cried to Blizzard about region-locking Koreans because foreigners are too crappy at the game (and they even say as much, amirite uthermal) to play with the big boys.
If foreigner Starcraft really is worth a damn then we wouldn't need to block out only Koreans from playing the game at international, open events.
Proleague is something special, it's something else in its own. It's downright entertaining, not only because of the games, but because it's fun to cheer for a team (rather than just a player). I'm a Jinair fanboy because I love my boy Maru, but I'm still cheering for Jinair players whenever they play.
Also, for sure the Korean scene gets its share of shitty games. Look at Zest's most recent PL match. I still don't get it and this is the current GSL champion we're talking about here. Was that high level play? Fuck no. In fact many, many Korean games are bops. They're shitty games which end in less than 5 minutes because one player fucked up. Why is that, you ask?
Most likely because Koreans win to play the game, foreigners play to not lose. So you get cutting edge matches out of Koreans, down to the wire because they're doing everything they can to cinch a win. When I watch a foreigner game (granted, I haven't seen any in a while) I don't get the same vibes at all.
In the mean time, I'm not going to get vibes or nerd chills watching foreign Starcraft if I know that right off the bat, tournaments are hosted in a way to keep out of overall best players in the world. Are you telling me I'm supposed to get excited for tournaments which have been explicitly watered down to protect foreigners from Koreans? Maybe YOU can get excited for that and maybe YOU can tell yourself that you're watching amazing Starcraft. Me? I can't.
These are my views and remarks. I hope tournament organizers read this and think things over. There's nothing wrong with regional tournaments, on the contrary, that's a good idea. However having ONLY regional tournaments is stupid as fuck, you'd want still at least 2 or 3 international, open events. Of which this year we're going to get 2, I believe. Homestory Cup and Kespa Cup. One got cock-blocked by Blizzard in that it can't give WCS points, the other interferes with Copa America (whatever it's called, also why the fuck are Euros playing in it??) so that it's not a realistically good tournament for foreigners to attend.
There's no IEM Global event or Dreamhack Open and I will rightfully lament that.
On September 08 2016 18:15 opisska wrote:Unless you are a prodigy like Stephano or Polt, you need to train full time to be even remotely good
Are you telling me that Team Liquid is NOT paying for airline tickets and NOT allowing their players to practice full time? Are TL players required to work part-time sewing TL t-shirts to be allowed to practice? Does Millenium ask that players specifically limit the amount of practice they get, so as to save money on internet bills? Does Euronics not pay players their rent?
Serious question: are players salaried at all? Korean or foreigner?
I don't know. I think it's a bit cheap to say that foreigners don't have the same opportunities to practice as Koreans. Especially when LOTV came out and a kind of soft-reset took place.
I would say that the best foreigners are easily Code S level. The reason I say that is because the players who were beaten in Code A are people like Bunny, Trust, jjakji, Symbol, Stork, Sorry, Billowy, Armani, Pet, and Reality, These are all players that I think the top foreigners can beat or have already beaten.
not sure about that. maybe foreigners have improved this year (online results are different than offline results) but last year some of the worst koreans could still dominate foreign tournaments. wiki.teamliquid.net wiki.teamliquid.net
And that's why I'm saying that the foreigners have improved this year. Also, the Asus one actually proves my point because drogo won against lower level Koreans, and he also won versus Code A Koreans. Yes, he lost to Losira (Code S), but a 4-2 score isn't bad, and I don't really think that drogo was the best foreigner last year either. So when you have lower level Koreans and Code A level Koreans instead of top 16/8 Code S Koreans, foreigners don't do so poorly.
I was more referring to the fact that B4 and Keen (2 Prime players who couldn't win a single map in proleague) and apocalypse (who?) got to the playoffs ahead of Snute, Lilbow, Bunny (the 3 top foreigners at the time) Uthermal and Mlord.
Right, but the only thing is that uThermal lost against drogo and then to Keen, so he lost against a Code A level player, who, by the way, was 3-4 in proleague around that time. Lilbow lost to Fantasy and TRUE, who were both good players at that time despite not making it into Code S.
Then yes, Bunny and MarineLorD lost against Apocalypse, so that is a bit of a surprise there. But the thing is that Bunny was in a bit of a slump at that time, having done fairly poorly in a number of tournaments, and he never made it into WCS season 3.
And yes, Snute lost to B4, so that was a decently big surprise. Let's recap:
Lilbow lost to 2 Code A players (who were definitely Code S level) Bunny was in a slump and lost to Apocalypse Snute lost to B4 (Definite upset) Uthermal lost to runner up and Keen (3-4 proleague, Code A) MarineLorD lost to Apocalypse (Decent upset)
So was it that much of a surprise? I'd say it was somewhat unexpected for Lilbow to not get further, but I'd say the odds were not really for him, and I'd not really take this tournament as example of weak Koreans dominating the top foreigners.
So... let me get this straight. You guys have been arguing for like 5 pages with a guy that doesn't think that foreigner SC2 players are any good this year despite the fact that he has clearly said multiple times that he does even watch them because he thinks they're not any good.
Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the drawer but there seems to be something inherently illogical about this whole thing.
On September 09 2016 12:32 breaker1328 wrote: So... let me get this straight. You guys have been arguing for like 5 pages with a guy that doesn't think that foreigner SC2 players are any good this year despite the fact that he has clearly said multiple times that he does even watch them because he thinks they're not any good.
Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the drawer but there seems to be something inherently illogical about this whole thing.
What's wrong with some healthy discussion?
I also just need to look at some liquipedia and judge from there. Then there's also foreigners THEMSELVES whining that Koreans are too good and shouldn't be allowed to play in international tournaments.
Doesn't take a sharp tool to figure out that foreigners aren't very good at the game. I'll literally just take them up on their word.
On September 09 2016 14:27 Hok wrote: I have a genuine question...
How does region lock make foreigners get better? Or was region lock done for a money thing.
Was having Koreans win tournaments not good for money?
I'm asking what the root thought process was behind tournament organizers doing this.
The region locking was done probably for money purposes, as helping foreign scene grow would only increase the amount of revenue coming in, but the region lock helps foreigners in two important ways.
First, they can now obtain a more sustainable income. A lot of the previous pros left because they were consistently stalled at a certain point in the tournaments, and so by enabling the remaining pros to earn a good living, they are more motivated to do well instead of being concerned with their financial situation.
Secondly, they can now play against people that are closer to their skill level. People will scoff and say that you can only become the best if you play the best, but they ignore the fact that you can't become the best if the best are miles ahead of you and will generally stomp all over you. If you're a junior hockey player, you don't generally play with the pros for the simple reason that you will usually get crushed. That's why playing people who are close or a little bit above you, the bar is more reachable.
For Koreans, the problem is that Sc2 is not like Sc1 or BW. There, the scene was primarily in Korea, whereas Starcraft 2 now is very global. The problem with having the Koreans dominating is that the rest of the scene dies, and this represents a serious loss for the sponsors of the competitive Starcraft 2 scene.
This is what I think they were considering when they decided to region lock everything. They knew the scene, especially the foreign one was dying, but the choice was to either super sponsor Korea (where it is far less popular) or sponsor it everywhere else (where it is like in the top ten of popular esports currently).
On September 09 2016 12:32 breaker1328 wrote: So... let me get this straight. You guys have been arguing for like 5 pages with a guy that doesn't think that foreigner SC2 players are any good this year despite the fact that he has clearly said multiple times that he does even watch them because he thinks they're not any good.
Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the drawer but there seems to be something inherently illogical about this whole thing.
What's wrong with some healthy discussion?
I also just need to look at some liquipedia and judge from there. Then there's also foreigners THEMSELVES whining that Koreans are too good and shouldn't be allowed to play in international tournaments.
Doesn't take a sharp tool to figure out that foreigners aren't very good at the game. I'll literally just take them up on their word.
Also, I like arguing with people I may not disagree because it can lead to some good discussions, and it is also enlightening to hear people's points of view beyond simply "WCS welfare" or "foreigners suck" or "WCS sucks."
Also there's that implicit desire for a person to "win" a debate which has like never happened here.
On September 09 2016 14:27 Hok wrote: I have a genuine question...
How does region lock make foreigners get better? Or was region lock done for a money thing.
Was having Koreans win tournaments not good for money?
I'm asking what the root thought process was behind tournament organizers doing this.
To be honest, it was probably primarily a money thing. As incontrol claimed tournaments were pressuring blizzard into it in an attempt to raise viewership.
As far as improved play, uThermal mentioned how being in the ro32 and never advancing because of Koreans is not helpful. And to an extent I see where he comes from, but at the same time EU showed us that Koreans are the best things that can happen to foreigners. When Mvp and MC and MMA and First and all these great players were coming to live in EU, we saw several europeans become much better. Those skilled players and environments came to them! They had the ability to hone their skills against GSL winners on ladder and there was significant improvement.
Honestly it's a matter of how hard you want to work.
On September 09 2016 14:27 Hok wrote: I have a genuine question...
How does region lock make foreigners get better? Or was region lock done for a money thing.
Was having Koreans win tournaments not good for money?
I'm asking what the root thought process was behind tournament organizers doing this.
To be honest, it was probably primarily a money thing. As incontrol claimed tournaments were pressuring blizzard into it in an attempt to raise viewership.
As far as improved play, uThermal mentioned how being in the ro32 and never advancing because of Koreans is not helpful. And to an extent I see where he comes from, but at the same time EU showed us that Koreans are the best things that can happen to foreigners. When Mvp and MC and MMA and First and all these great players were coming to live in EU, we saw several europeans become much better. Those skilled players and environments came to them! They had the ability to hone their skills against GSL winners on ladder and there was significant improvement.
Honestly it's a matter of how hard you want to work.
I think that almost everyone acknowledges how 2013/2014 WCS improved EU, however the problem was that the same just didn't happen in America.
On September 09 2016 14:27 Hok wrote: I have a genuine question...
How does region lock make foreigners get better? Or was region lock done for a money thing.
Was having Koreans win tournaments not good for money?
I'm asking what the root thought process was behind tournament organizers doing this.
To be honest, it was probably primarily a money thing. As incontrol claimed tournaments were pressuring blizzard into it in an attempt to raise viewership.
As far as improved play, uThermal mentioned how being in the ro32 and never advancing because of Koreans is not helpful. And to an extent I see where he comes from, but at the same time EU showed us that Koreans are the best things that can happen to foreigners. When Mvp and MC and MMA and First and all these great players were coming to live in EU, we saw several europeans become much better. Those skilled players and environments came to them! They had the ability to hone their skills against GSL winners on ladder and there was significant improvement.
Honestly it's a matter of how hard you want to work.
I think that almost everyone acknowledges how 2013/2014 WCS improved EU, however the problem was that the same just didn't happen in America.
I think the issue was that the majority of Koreans didn't live there. They played in the qualifiers, but they didn't increase the competitive scene there unlike the Koreans in Europe.
Also, I think the key to words are "some" Koreans. Back in 2013, you had fewer Koreans coming over to play in WCS than in 2014. I don't think the European foreign scene improved as much during 2014 because of this. Also of note is that the best Koreans generally did not come over to the WCS regions. Yes, there were the Polts, Taejas, Bombers, and forGGs, but in general the best Koreans stayed in Korea.
The only system that worked well for both Koreans and foreigners was probably: "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."
This is such a great news. I love Global Events with Koreans and foreigners colliding. Finally!
I really root for herO to win it and hopefully make his way to BlizzCon. Too bad, Maru has no chance even if he wins given he barely has any points. sOs needs to win the CrossFinal + KeSPA Cup to make it to BlizzCon. Tough task for him but not impossible.
I'll be in Seoul for the Group stage and would really like to see some SC2 competition. I understand it will be in Nexon Area but do I need to buy ticket somewhere ? Do we have more info about the starts time of the games ?
I'll be in Seoul for the Group stage and would really like to see some SC2 competition. I understand it will be in Nexon Area but do I need to buy ticket somewhere ? Do we have more info about the starts time of the games ?
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Hmm, I don't think there are many people who think "Koreans only win thanks to infrastructure". I'm sure most people understand there are usually more factors that determine why things are the way they are. Discussions have the tendency to polarize and posts like these are a good example of why. Also the fact that a teamless player wins for the first time ever in 2 decades of Korean top level Starcraft isn't exactly supporting the point you are trying to make either.
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Hmm, I don't think there are many people who think "Koreans only win thanks to infrastructure". I'm sure most people understand there are usually more factors that determine why things are the way they are. Discussions have the tendency to polarize and posts like these are a good example of why. Also the fact that a teamless player wins for the first time ever in 2 decades of Korean top level Starcraft isn't exactly supporting the point you are trying to make either.
lol
believe me, there aren't many people but there are people who say that
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Seeing how he is the first to do so in 18 years of korean starcraft or something, it actually kinda proves the point that infrastructure helps immensely (although it's not the only factor of course). Plus the general level of play in Korea seems to have worsened so it might be easier to do such a thing .
ByuN practicing with Neeb, Super and a few chinese protosses gives me good hopes for foreigners at Blizzcon :D.
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Hmm, I don't think there are many people who think "Koreans only win thanks to infrastructure". I'm sure most people understand there are usually more factors that determine why things are the way they are. Discussions have the tendency to polarize and posts like these are a good example of why. Also the fact that a teamless player wins for the first time ever in 2 decades of Korean top level Starcraft isn't exactly supporting the point you are trying to make either.
lol
believe me, there aren't many people but there are people who say that
There are some one track minded people but better not focus on them I think
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Seeing how he is the first to do so in 18 years of korean starcraft or something, it actually kinda proves the point that infrastructure helps immensely (although it's not the only factor of course). Plus the general level of play in Korea seems to have worsened so it might be easier to do such a thing .
ByuN practicing with Neeb, Super and a few chinese protosses gives me good hopes for foreigners at Blizzcon :D.
Exactly. It isn't just that foreigners don't work hard enough, it's that infrastructure makes a big difference. (Of course infrastructure isn't everything).
I mean if Neeb and Byun practice together, that's pretty awesome for Neeb. He can practice with a GSL champion.
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Seeing how he is the first to do so in 18 years of korean starcraft or something, it actually kinda proves the point that infrastructure helps immensely (although it's not the only factor of course). Plus the general level of play in Korea seems to have worsened so it might be easier to do such a thing .
Byun may be the first one to do it but it still proves that it's possible to compete with top Kespa players without the infrustructure if you just practice hard enough and have the talent.
The infrastructure is of course an advantage but I think the main reason why koreans are better than foreigners is just because they practice harder and are more dedicated to the game.
edit: also TaeJa won like 11 premier tournaments without being in a teamhouse
On September 12 2016 01:21 Incognoto wrote: so where are all the people who said that koreans only win thanks to infrastructure?
then teamless byun wins gsl, who also practiced with neeb
lol
wp, neeb!
Seeing how he is the first to do so in 18 years of korean starcraft or something, it actually kinda proves the point that infrastructure helps immensely (although it's not the only factor of course). Plus the general level of play in Korea seems to have worsened so it might be easier to do such a thing .
Byun may be the first one to do it but it still proves that it's possible to compete with top Kespa players without the infrustructure if you just practice hard enough and have the talent.
The infrastructure is of course an advantage but I think the main reason why koreans are better than foreigners is just because they practice harder and are more dedicated to the game.
He also grew up within the Korean system and also was part of a pro team for a while. That has advantages as well.
But he's the first one in 18 years. Think about all the pro players not on a team. How many Korean players do as well as him? Taeja is a good example, but again, he grew up in the system and was on a pro team. Growing up in that environment is a lot different than growing up in a place that doesn't foster Starcraft as much.
I think it's unfair to those other players to say that they don't do as well as top Koreans because they don't work hard enough. It may be the case that they don't work as hard m (or it may not), but it is a bit dismissive to say that they just need to "work harder" to be as good as the very best.
Judging from what Snute along with what other pro players on here have said, they work extremely hard at this game and do not always have the results.
I am in Seoul right now and I would love to attend the finals today. I tried contacting KeSPA but so far without success. Does anyone know where the location of the finals is and if you need to buy a ticket? If yes, where can I buy this ticket and how much does it cost?
It would be amazing if I could see this live but no English translations or location makes it pretty hard to access.
I am in Seoul right now and I would love to attend the finals today. I tried contacting KeSPA but so far without success. Does anyone know where the location of the finals is and if you need to buy a ticket? If yes, where can I buy this ticket and how much does it cost?
It would be amazing if I could see this live but no English translations or location makes it pretty hard to access.
Cheers,
nrage
AFAIK it's still in the Nexon arena and there are free english broadcast sets for people who want them.
-source: It's been there the whole time and I haven't heard of any changes.
I am in Seoul right now and I would love to attend the finals today. I tried contacting KeSPA but so far without success. Does anyone know where the location of the finals is and if you need to buy a ticket? If yes, where can I buy this ticket and how much does it cost?
It would be amazing if I could see this live but no English translations or location makes it pretty hard to access.
Cheers,
nrage
AFAIK it's still in the Nexon arena and there are free english broadcast sets for people who want them.
-source: It's been there the whole time and I haven't heard of any changes.
Thank you for your response.
What do you mean with free English broadcast sets? I want to watch the event at the venue. Do you know if I need a ticket?
I am in Seoul right now and I would love to attend the finals today. I tried contacting KeSPA but so far without success. Does anyone know where the location of the finals is and if you need to buy a ticket? If yes, where can I buy this ticket and how much does it cost?
It would be amazing if I could see this live but no English translations or location makes it pretty hard to access.
Cheers,
nrage
AFAIK it's still in the Nexon arena and there are free english broadcast sets for people who want them.
-source: It's been there the whole time and I haven't heard of any changes.
Thank you for your response.
What do you mean with free English broadcast sets? I want to watch the event at the venue. Do you know if I need a ticket?
You can grab a radio headset so you can hear English casting in the venue, live audio will be Korean.
I am in Seoul right now and I would love to attend the finals today. I tried contacting KeSPA but so far without success. Does anyone know where the location of the finals is and if you need to buy a ticket? If yes, where can I buy this ticket and how much does it cost?
It would be amazing if I could see this live but no English translations or location makes it pretty hard to access.
Cheers,
nrage
AFAIK it's still in the Nexon arena and there are free english broadcast sets for people who want them.
-source: It's been there the whole time and I haven't heard of any changes.
Thank you for your response.
What do you mean with free English broadcast sets? I want to watch the event at the venue. Do you know if I need a ticket?
"broadcast set" means you can get a headset with English commentary if you ask for it at the studio As far as I know there are no tickets unless something changed
EPT![[image loading]](https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/14249801_519084484957917_5574275946615524675_o.jpg)
