EPTCommunity Feedback Update - February 10 - Page 9
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hiroshOne
Poland425 Posts
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Phaenoman
568 Posts
On February 21 2017 05:07 JackONeill wrote: I don't think that's accurate. (at least, not the only reason) The general dynamic of SC2 was foreigners "inventing" metagames, and the koreans perfecting it. In turn, the koreans, because of their level at the game, mainly played against each other, creating a very specific KR meta. Meanwhile, most foreigners just couldn't compete with the raw mechanical skills of koreans. I do agree that since the end of PL and the "exportation" of korean players, this dynamic might have changed a little, however i think it's still more or less the same. What does that mean? On the one hand, there's not much foreign pro terrans anymore. Who is there, as a sucessful terran foreign pro player? Marinelord left, maybe Uthermal, or Demuslim? Maybe Major? And no one, except for Major's "straight into skyterran" build, is playing mech. There was practically no mech play in NA/EU since patch 3.8. On the other hand, because KR players are so used to play in a tiny and specific community, they tend to use the most mainstream style with variations. Mainly because mech revolves so much around specific builds and sneaky/very agressive stuff, once it's figured out, "everyone" knows how to counter it. And when you play in a tiny community where everyone watches everyone play, you can't really get away with a recurrent sneak/ultra agressive build. A good exemple was Innovation playing the same mech build every game against Dark at the IEM Gyeonggi finals. We could see that Dark was still adaptating throught the BO to try and figure out the 2 reactored factories into mech build. In the end, Innovation won. Fast forward few months, Byun uses the same build against Ptak at nationwars, and he gets wrecked because ptak went for fast mutas. This is a good exemple of a mech build that was used by Inno, either because it wasn't figured out yet, either because he identified that Dark had a specific weakness. But when it gets figured out, it can completely whiff. So what do we end up with? - NA/EU : few sucessfull terrans, and no mech play - KR : KR top players aren't coming up with a "mech vs zerg standard" meta, but snipe/sneaky builds (if i'm wrong, feel free to correct) I think that at this point, if better results in the foreign scene could be achieved with mech play, the few sucessfull terran players we have would have come up with some mech vs zerg meta in 3.8. And KR terran top players (who are doing quite well at the moment) mech builds are snipe/cheesy builds, that don't rely on much any meta. We could see that leenock, playing against Ryung, played the HOTS meta. No use of SHs, roach hydras into fast vipers. And that's why mech, i think, despite all the indirect reasons we can think of, has proven itself not to be viable. Because there's no "standard meta". No standard build. No "reaper expand into 2 medivacs 16 marine stim drop". It's entirely based on sneaky/ultra agressive stuff where you either gain a very early advantage, or fail. I am not sure about the part with foreigners inventing and Koreans refining metas. But yea, currently mech is just in a "I'll try and see what happens"-state. It's true that there are games in which a meching players defeats his opponent here and there, but the term viability describes more than that, sadly regardless of what certain individuals claim. | ||
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VHbb
692 Posts
On February 21 2017 05:07 JackONeill wrote: I don't think that's accurate. (at least, not the only reason) The general dynamic of SC2 was foreigners "inventing" metagames, and the koreans perfecting it. In turn, the koreans, because of their level at the game, mainly played against each other, creating a very specific KR meta. Meanwhile, most foreigners just couldn't compete with the raw mechanical skills of koreans. I do agree that since the end of PL and the "exportation" of korean players, this dynamic might have changed a little, however i think it's still more or less the same. What does that mean? On the one hand, there's not much foreign pro terrans anymore. Who is there, as a sucessful terran foreign pro player? Marinelord left, maybe Uthermal, or Demuslim? Maybe Major? And no one, except for Major's "straight into skyterran" build, is playing mech. There was practically no mech play in NA/EU since patch 3.8. On the other hand, because KR players are so used to play in a tiny and specific community, they tend to use the most mainstream style with variations. Mainly because mech revolves so much around specific builds and sneaky/very agressive stuff, once it's figured out, "everyone" knows how to counter it. And when you play in a tiny community where everyone watches everyone play, you can't really get away with a recurrent sneak/ultra agressive build. A good exemple was Innovation playing the same mech build every game against Dark at the IEM Gyeonggi finals. We could see that Dark was still adaptating throught the BO to try and figure out the 2 reactored factories into mech build. In the end, Innovation won. Fast forward few months, Byun uses the same build against Ptak at nationwars, and he gets wrecked because ptak went for fast mutas. This is a good exemple of a mech build that was used by Inno, either because it wasn't figured out yet, either because he identified that Dark had a specific weakness. But when it gets figured out, it can completely whiff. So what do we end up with? - NA/EU : few sucessfull terrans, and no mech play - KR : KR top players aren't coming up with a "mech vs zerg standard" meta, but snipe/sneaky builds (if i'm wrong, feel free to correct) I think that at this point, if better results in the foreign scene could be achieved with mech play, the few sucessfull terran players we have would have come up with some mech vs zerg meta in 3.8. And KR terran top players (who are doing quite well at the moment) mech builds are snipe/cheesy builds, that don't rely on much any meta. We could see that leenock, playing against Ryung, played the HOTS meta. No use of SHs, roach hydras into fast vipers. And that's why mech, i think, despite all the indirect reasons we can think of, has proven itself not to be viable. Because there's no "standard meta". No standard build. No "reaper expand into 2 medivacs 16 marine stim drop". It's entirely based on sneaky/ultra agressive stuff where you either gain a very early advantage, or fail. I'm not sure I got your point  (I honestly ask)Do you mean that we don't have well developed mech builds because there are few foreigners playing mech? I think it may be part of the issue - though I don't know how much the foreigners contributed to build development wrt koreans in the past (maybe you are right, I don't have enough experience to tell) But I think, on top of what you say, there is still the point that: it's difficult to evaluate if mech is viable if nobody plays mech consistently for a long period of time. But my question is: - do proplayers not play mech because mech is unviable? or do proplayer not play mech because changing style so drastically is a very unsafe bet to make? It's kind of like saying (example case): if the race X is overpowered wrt Y and Z, do you think proplayers who use Y and Z since many years will switch to X? How much does X have to be better than Y and Z? How safe is to switch, when maybe it turns out that Z was not so much overpowered? | ||
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JackONeill
861 Posts
On February 21 2017 22:17 VHbb wrote: I'm not sure I got your point (I honestly ask)Do you mean that we don't have well developed mech builds because there are few foreigners playing mech? Yes, but mainly because since EU/NA terran are performing poorly, if mech play allowed better results, they would go for it. Look at Major defeating Nerchio (at NW4 i think) with a very silly skyterran build that was working only when libs did 7x2 AA damage flat. I think top NA/EU terrans are already reaching for some unconventionnal builds because they have trouble against other races, but mech isn't part of it. So not only is there few terran foreigners that COULD come up with new builds for mech, but they are actually not coming up with any. Therefore the only plausible explaination is that mech sucks at their level of play. On February 21 2017 22:17 VHbb wrote: I think it may be part of the issue - though I don't know how much the foreigners contributed to build development wrt koreans in the past (maybe you are right, I don't have enough experience to tell) But I think, on top of what you say, there is still the point that: it's difficult to evaluate if mech is viable if nobody plays mech consistently for a long period of time. But my question is: - do proplayers not play mech because mech is unviable? or do proplayer not play mech because changing style so drastically is a very unsafe bet to make? It's kind of like saying (example case): if the race X is overpowered wrt Y and Z, do you think proplayers who use Y and Z since many years will switch to X? How much does X have to be better than Y and Z? How safe is to switch, when maybe it turns out that Z was not so much overpowered? As I said i think it's because mech isn't viable outside of top KR level snipe/cheesy builds. That's an opinion, but the facts i presented, i think, tend to prove it. Appart from that i don't think you have to see playing mech as "a switch" from terrans playing bio. Mech and bio are styles, just like ranged and melee styles for zergs. The difference may be greater, but it still relies on the same terran production and control for the most part. Just as many zerg players use ranged or melee comps depending on the meta, some terran players also play mech or bio whenever one is "stronger" than the other. The best exemples are players like TY, Maru, Gumiho or mainly Innovation. Innovation is a mech god but is probably the best "parade push" (M/M/M/M strats against zerg) player in the world. Gumiho is such a wacky player that he'll use any units he needs, wether it's mech or bio. Even Bomber, i think, who was the prince of marine tanks in WOL, played mech from time to time. Perhaps foreign terrans have a harder time switching from one style to another, because mastering both is a lot of work, but i'm really not sure. | ||
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hiroshOne
Poland425 Posts
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) There was a very interesting State of the Game episode which touched this argument, but unfortunately I cannot remember which one.. (maybe it was the 100th..)
