Community Feedback Update - February 10 - Page 9

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.

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.

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?

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?