The StarCraft community has a nasty habit of dissecting everything of value to them. Be it professional players, teams, organizations or scenes, they place their objects of affection under a microscope to scrutinize, analyze, criticize and question them from every angle. It’s not a surprising phenomenon. Every sport accumulates ardent fans and detractors at the professional level. This is normal and ought to be encouraged to a point. Without bias, visceral personal investment, and the crests/troughs of passion, the community for any sport cannot exist. Intellectual appreciation only works to a point; the basis for support must be emotional. But what happens when said emotions are taken as irreducible proof?
The most obstinate result is reducing things to their most salient traits. Players are stuffed into neat little archetypes: title contenders, champions, upstarts, dark horses, disappointments, villains. Useful as shorthand to describe what is most pertinent, they function as the building blocks of narratives. As people who draw on them to frame the stakes of events, we TL writers are guilty of constantly indulging in them just to get articles out on time. Yet the terms become prisons when the term substitutes for reality. Scenes, teams, and races are conceptualized in broad terms fueled by personal gripes in place of nuance and balanced observation.
Like in any sufficiently large community, the memes (Dawkins and otherwise) are inculcated by the loudest and more populous voices. Intelligent discussion is drowned out by the thrum of egos from advocates and dissenters alike. As a result, everything is filtered through a fixed lens. When players become caricatures, their accomplishments and failures are magnified accordingly. The true worth of their achievements, in the pluralistic sense, are irreparably warped: they become the product of imagination rather than fact.
And woe to those who fail to live up to these newfangled expectations.
Zest: The Best Until He Isn’t
In 2014, a largely unacknowledged KT Rolster Protoss named Zest rose to prominence. He had a breathtaking run of success that year, winning GSL Season 1, GSL Global Championship, and KeSPA Cup along with second place at IEM Toronto and a semifinal finish in GSL Season 3. It was a monstrous feat that rivaled earlier periods like Mvp’s 2011 dominance and Stephano’s vicegrip on the European scene in 2012. More remarkably, it was a tidal wave without foreshadowing. Zest didn’t hint at this level of prowess with promising showings in other places. Beyond a middling performance at IEM New York, he was still struggling to even qualify for GSL.
His GSL victory against soO in which he refused to give up announced him to the scene as a resourceful, determined player. Less than a month later he defeated soO again and came back from the brink against PartinG in the Global Championship. Zest was starting to look immortal; the closer he got to death, the stronger he became. He somehow fell to Flash in Toronto, but showed completely mastery of PvP at KeSPA Cup. At this point it was clear Zest was a step ahead of everyone else in Korea. His play was crisp, forceful, decisive and reactive all at once. Zest seemed capable of anything. It didn’t take long for everyone to acknowledge Zest as an all-time great.
If it had just been success that distinguished him, Zest might have earned more forgiveness for his future slip ups. Unfortunately he was also a serious piece of eye candy. It’s passé to point out most esports players can be gawky and awkward, and more famous ones get significant brownie points for being close to “normal”. Most of the truly successful streamers manage to blend inoffensive identification with entertainment into an aspirational brand: “one of us” could become famous too. I doubt you could say the same about this guy:
Gamers being muscular and charismatic isn’t a foreign idea in the West. They pop up just often enough to ward off ignorant accusations that video games necessarily turn their victims into puddles of sugar-infused energy drinks and blocked arteries. It was strikingly incongruent for Korean pro players, who never buckled up their physiques despite KeSPA teams stressing the importance of regular exercise. Beyond questions of diet and fitness regime, Korean players also feel little pressure to take on stereotypically masculine personas. Their tendencies tilt towards modesty, emphasis on talking about hard work, avoidance of being too controversial or abrasive, a certain fascination with bowl haircuts. In short, the other traits that form the basis of the “faceless Korean” stereotype; just think about how homogenous their haircuts could be during group selection. Zest was as physically enviable as his contemporaries were normal, easy going when they would clam up, self-assured in contrast to their jitters and doubts. It was almost like he was the humbler reincarnation of Reach, the famous BW player who once declared “Protoss is a man’s race”.
It was not an asterisk that overshadowed his play. But thanks to fans and casters fascinated by its incongruity, it became impossible to ignore. Once Zest burst onto the scene, he garnered a large number of fans and their loyalty. His reputation grew exponentially as every success reinforced his genial yet hypermasculine image. Instead of connecting with Zest based on his vulnerability and humanity, he impressed fans with his seemingly unflappable perfection. He combined the natural emphasis on winning with the type of enviable features that the esports demographic still latently pines for. It created a rare dynamic that was ultimately unsustainable.
Post-2014 Zest has been stripped of his glow of invulnerability. Disbarring this year’s SSL and GSL Season there have been 11 Starleagues since the start of 2015. Zest has reached the semifinals once on his way to winning 2016 GSL Season 1, where he only lost one map on his way to the finals. Outside of that triumph, it’s hard to determine how stable he is as a player. He has alternated between frequent quarterfinals appearances and failing to qualify altogether (five times to be exact). Outside of the major Starleagues, he won IEM Katowice in spring 2015 and posted a 62% win rate in Proleague during the same period. This speaks to a mercurial player who suffers from lows as deep as his atmospheric peaks. He is not the same juggernaut that barreled through all obstacles unabated during his prime.
When a lot of players have drops in form, it is visible in their mechanics or their build selection or their strategy and execution. It is rarely all of those things. Modern day Zest suffers in all those regards. He appears a step behind from the get-go, choosing disadvantaged builds and executing them poorly. His scouting is off, his decision making is lacking; he looks hapless. It's incredibly noticeable when Zest is in bad form. Simply put he flounders. The community expects his best at all times and is eager to leap on him when he does not deliver.
What do we make of this inconsistency? Unsurprisingly the two most vocal opinions are the most extreme. One is that he has devolved into garbage. Since he can’t replicate his best historical showings, Zest must be a terrible player. This is further amplified by a sense of resentment: he shows up just enough to remind people that he can still play at a top level, then contradicts it with some blunderheaded mistake. The other is he remains the same man, but circumstances have connived to deny him of glory. Evidence includes the fickle strata of the Korean scene, the failures of most other Protoss players due to patches/race imbalance/limited options for gameplay/a foul wind sweeping in from the north. His heyday may be over but a lack of results doesn’t correspond with a drop in skill. External factors bar him from reclaiming his title of best Protoss player, nothing more.
Realistically, Zest’s downfall was the same as every other champion. A combination of players catching onto and adapting to his style, meta changes due to patches and innovations in strategy/tactics, and bad luck with opponents knocked him off the top rung. Beyond that some of the more heavily criticized flaws always existed, masked by proficiency in other areas. Floating 1K+ minerals in the midgame is a standard Zest quirk; accidentally move-commanding armies into awkward fights has happened sporadically since he started playing StarCraft 2. These mistakes were amusing, even cute in a he’s-just-like-us way, back when they barely made a dent in his winning ways. Now they feel unforgivable. With all the minute errors in positioning, map awareness, scouting, and economy management, a single lapse along those lines becomes a grievous mistake.
Zest is a player with an incredible skill ceiling. When he is operating at his peak, he is the perfect storm. His comprehension of PvT in early 2016 was unparalleled: he seemed to have mapped out every permutation possible and determined the optimal response. Zest was so good his Terran opponents could never find an appreciable advantage. He is also a player who, when he struggles, looks like a shadow of his former glory. Someone this inconsistent would warrant cautious optimism...or at least some sympathy. But rather than be patient with him, the community oscillates between praise and disdain in patterns as volatile as Zest’s form. While Zest is the product of his achievements, his image is the creation of other minds and voices. Too often its detachment from reality is taken for granted.
ByuN: Icarus Unwilling
It’s easy to forget given the year ByuN just had, but initially he was just another solid player in the early days of StarCraft 2. It was a period where most common strategies were in their nascent period, and players could find great success with one or two strong advantages; players like InCa and Rain could stumble into a finals berth and never come close to replicating such results again. ByuN emerged from that era with two round of four appearances. He lost on both occasions, the victim of Losira and the forgotten champion Seed. But fans come to associate him with something entirely different. The fact that ByuN brought his puppy to team league was his most memorable contribution pre-HotS. Yes, the man who would one day be deemed the best player in the world was more forgettable than a dog.
For reasons no one fully understands, ByuN retreated from the public eye for much of HotS. When he did play, he failed to exhibit the form that make him a classic underdog. ByuN became a running joke instead. He was turned into a fugitive from KeSPA, a daring bandit who refused to succumb to their dastardly plot to assimilate all Korean SC2 under their wing. It was a great joke with long legs. But it didn’t reflect ByuN as a player of prestige or note.
All of that changed with the release of LotV. ByuN started to build up steam from the get-go. His results in online tournaments captured the attention of foreign fans, just as his relatability and outgoing, everyman personality won over reluctant Korean fans. He gathered momentum as the year went on, picking up a larger and larger following as the results improved. By the time he seized GSL and BlizzCon as spoils of war, one would think he was the second coming of MVP. Scratch that, MVP wasn’t even worthy of fetching ByuN’s coffee.
Of course ByuN didn’t order the community to lavish him with praise. He didn’t tout his micro as the best ever. And it wasn’t ByuN that told Afreeca and the community to run with the narrative as him being a man fighting against the establishment. He was just playing in the only way he knew how: with tenacious, single-minded dedication.
This dogged determination happened to coincide with LotV changes that stressed the primacy of multitasking at the expense of simplifying overall strategy. ByuN was an impressive mechanical player with a good sense of when and how to attack, and he had a unmatched feel for the pacing of the new expansion. At the same time the general dynamics of LotV obscured many of his weaknesses. ByuN mastered a style of applying continuous pressure onto the opponent, usually starting with drops and transitioning into a series of progressively more oppressive timing attacks. It happened to be the perfect antidote against Protoss, who were shying away from colossus-based unit compositions, and the mutalisk had been nerfed out of competitive viability. This granted ByuN unrivaled freedom to harass worker lines and chip away at the enemy’s main force without concerns about counterattacks or flanking; it also allowed him to solely focus on controlling engagements without being distracted by attacks elsewhere. By no means was his play perfect. There were holes in his defensive multitasking, splitting, and build orders that could’ve been exploited in other metas. In fact they appeared time after time whenever ByuN’s initial approach failed to outright win the game. Nevertheless such flaws were ignored during the height of his success. People didn’t just fail to recognize them, but actively refused to acknowledge their existence.
During the backend of 2016, the drive to hype up ByuN as World’s Greatest Terran™ overrode any competing desires for honesty. His ascension to the top was characterized by a concerted effort to frame him as the historical crème de la crème. In retrospect one could hardly blame figureheads for ballooning ByuN to the status of living legend. Between the dread over waiting for another KeSPA organization to disband its team and uncertainty regarding Proleague, competitive StarCraft was in a fragile state. The Korean scene may not have been the most popular or unifying aspect of the game’s international presence, but it had become all but indispensable. It was the venerable institution that proved StarCraft could be serious, sustainable, and influential beyond its niche audience. Without Korea competitive SC2 would be reduced to the equivalent of a well-meaning but hapless amateur league. It was imperative to reassure the community that the seismic shift occurring on the other side of the planet was just a shift.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”.
Since BlizzCon results haven’t come as easily for ByuN. Many of his recent struggles can be traced to specific game changes: the reintroduction of mutalisks, the removal of tankivacs, the slow disappearance of the 16 marine/2 medivac push in TvZ. Undoubtedly opponents have studied his gameplay and learned to exploit its most salient features. But the least esoteric source of his troubles may be his personality. It’s well known that ByuN is supremely emotional when playing. He dedicates so much of his identity and time to the game that failure, no matter how small or uneventful, wounds him to the core. He is a player who agonizes over every misstep, no matter if it’s in a group stage or the finals of a premier event. ByuN’s visible despair when losing at IEM paints an especially tragic figure. It almost seems as if the stakes have been upped. He has the weight of the community behind him. But just as they can support him, the expectations can be crushing.
ByuN is beloved and his play is showered with commendation. But sometimes a person doesn’t need to be told how good they are. They just need to get back to what they were doing. What made them great in the first place. ByuN hasn’t become a bad player by any stretch of the imagination. Like all champions, he has returned to Earth after soaring among the clouds. Yet he didn’t fall by flying too close to the stun of his own accord; he was catapulted to those heights by the uncritical praise of others. And when things slipped and the waxen wings fell apart, he crashed to Earth under the unbearable weight of a community’s hope.
Victims of Fallacy
Zest and ByuN might only earn a modicum of sympathy: they can afford to dry their eyes with money and acclaim. Those who suffer the most are the middling players. The nobodies, the unspectacular and ordinary are mired in stagnation, constantly striving to find a foothold only to fall back to the starting line. Players like Billowy or Trust are recognizable for mediocrity more than anything else. Their performances are consistently underwhelming. Nothing is expected of them. And with such perceived mediocrity comes the assumption that they will never break that trend. The sad fact is that in a scene full of heavyweights, minor players simply cannot gain the momentum required to extricate themselves from that quagmire.
It’s easy to forget every player in the Ro32 is in the 99th percentile of all StarCraft players. The difference in skill between a gatekeeper and Stats seems huge within the game, but the gap is composed of an accumulation of minor details. In reality they are the best of the best. To forget that fact is to undermine a player’s legitimacy. Moreso it whitewashes how hard it is to even maintain a presence in Code S.
Then there are players haunted by the past. Where they are on a personal level is irrelevant, for the community will cling to their past achievements like a malignant specter. Leenock and jjakji are prime examples of players whose best days are behind them. Though playing at a highly competitive level, it’s impossible to deny that they are no longer elite.
In a stroke of happenstance, both participated in the same Round of 32 group in 2017 GSL Season 1. They were the players with the most GSL finals appearances among the four, but Cure and Dark were the favorites (or at least the players with the most recent success in premier events). No one batted an eye when jjakji promptly fell out of the group. It was expected that a player past his prime couldn’t compete. Rises in form are most commonly viewed with amusement for that reason. He can win, but public opinion says he will fail soon enough. And that’s exactly what happened for Leenock. While he advanced in second place, he was given little credit; when he was bounced from the round of 16 without winning a match, existing prejudices were validated. He just doesn’t have what it takes anymore.
Every game jjakji and Leenock play is framed against their triumphant pasts. It is almost impossible to match them and, as Leenock discovered, positive results aren’t celebrated, they are diminished through comparison. The community views them as a shadow of their former self. They almost become a novelty, summed up in a single joke. When the community strips a player of their viability as a challenger, it undermines the entire scene. Suddenly all events are decided between a few players. Why should Leenock and jjakji even compete when INnoVation will be playing the current best Protoss in every final?
Beyond its more careless acts of denigration, the community has a soft spot for deifying its favorites. Zest and ByuN are the latest in a long line of players who are more than human in the minds of their most loving adherents. Adoration comes in torrents along with clout and commendation. But with respect and love comes impossibly high standards. Players are made out to stand for something greater than themselves, and supporters can lapse into resentment and anger when that illusion is broken. Every player loses, but it rarely matters when the average ones do. Everything is magnified for community darlings; more often than not, unreasonably.
Accepting the Blame
The lure of a neat, easily digestible structure is irresistible. Once established as a “kong”, “a champion” or “an underachiever” it turns a player into an intelligible entity that fits into the larger lattice of the scene. The projection, pigeon-holing and classification involves allows fans to easily compartmentalize their emotions and focus on what they care most deeply about. For casters and writers, it grants us inexhaustible opportunities to organize a scene that would be confusing and overwhelming otherwise. You could say these archetypes are the basis of narrative. Without them, how could we one ascertain whether one match is more compelling than another? How would we convince you a tournament final has real stakes beyond the obvious?
The danger is the old clarion call about words and their power: once we describe something, we also dictate its meaning. It is far easier to stick to a standard once it’s established rather than continually update our assumptions. The veneer of being a “champion”, “the bad boy”, “X Jr.” is a matter of image that exists outside of the player’s control. Unless the individual is canny about swaying public opinion, they are liable to become outlines of people instead of people. This type of radical simplification extends to their accomplishments too. Whether it be during their careers or after they have retired, the community’s interpretation of achievements mean more than the achievements themselves. Neeb’s KeSPA Cup win is a towering achievement because he was the first foreigner to win a tournament on Korean soil in decades. soO’s is a pleasant aside at best, a meaningless act of futility at worst for reasons we all know. Lost in all the edification is what those victories meant to them.
Ultimately, the history of StarCraft 2 is recorded by the community rather than the players. That power resides with the loudest and most insistent spokesmen, whether those are casters, writers, tournament organizers, or your frequent TL poster. It's impossible to resist bowing to personal prejudices and favoritism, particularly for those with the platform to influence others, but greater care should be taken to consider a wider range of opinions rather than blindly deciding one is "correct". The StarCraft community is a passionate one, and tensions will often run hot when it comes to divisive issues. Taking pause to consider each event from a wider perspective paints a much fairer picture.
On May 02 2017 23:21 MrMischelito wrote: "There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”."
what is the reason?
Was kind of curious about that one as well...
If it is about Byun target firing Banes of creep... they are usually non speed banes and due to the Hotkey Change "all" you have to do to target fire the banes in lotv is hold down A and hover over them and they will die. So you no longer need to a click them and be scared of missing one.
But kind of weird to write such a statement without offering a closing to it.
Why don´t you address next time the immortal, the unique, the unfathomable, the unbeatable titan that STXSoul Dear was during the months prior to Blizzcon 2013?
Well written article, but favoritism happens in all sports. I believe that the community will always pick a favorite for whatever reason. Be it a more interesting personnality, more interesting style or even being new.
Fans have always dismissed players or teams in whatever sport. Fans always expect the best from their players, and the moment it goes bad they will insult them, calling them washed up, B tier, or just bad. This won't change.
Fans always want a champion to hold the "bonjwa" banner. If last years champ can't do it, he must be bad and they will hop unto the next bandwagon.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
I don't see how having twice the opportunity to win is somehow a bad thing that makes Mvp even greater...
If anything, the best of the best will more easily distinguish themselves if they have more options, because the risk of them being cheesed out by a lesser player or having "a bad day" on the most important occsion is reduced...
On May 02 2017 23:21 MrMischelito wrote: "There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”."
what is the reason?
Was kind of curious about that one as well...
If it is about Byun target firing Banes of creep... they are usually non speed banes and due to the Hotkey Change "all" you have to do to target fire the banes in lotv is hold down A and hover over them and they will die. So you no longer need to a click them and be scared of missing one.
But kind of weird to write such a statement without offering a closing to it.
Hotkey change? Nothing has changed about target-firing banes. The reason we see it now so often is because of the rise of the 2/1/1 build which gives a ton of opportunities for target-firing banes.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
I don't see how having twice the opportunity to win is somehow a bad thing that makes Mvp even greater...
If anything, the best of the best will more easily distinguish themselves if they have more options, because the risk of them being cheesed out by a lesser player or having "a bad day" on the most important occsion is reduced...
You just proved my point. twice the opportunities to win also means twice the opportunities to lose (not make a top 4 finish) he played in an era with far more competition, when the game was just being figured out, and still managed a dominating record. in my mind the two aren't even close.
MVP won gsl code S TWO TIMES in 2011, as well as winning the GSL World championship.
He also came in 2nd in Code A in May, 2nd in Code S in October, 3-4th in Code S in November, won an MLG, and won Blizzcon 2011 as well as World Cyber Games 2011.
tell me in what world Zest's GSL championship, (i'll admit this one championship is worth both of MVP's Code S championships because of the frequency of gsl tournaments back then) his GSL global championship (equivalent to MVP's GSL world championship title) and Kespa cup championship are equivalent to MVP's two Code S titles, GSL world title, MLG, blizzcon, AND WCG??
you're basically saying that winning a kespa cup is the equivalent of winning a Blizzcon, WCG, and MLG. i wholeheartedly disagree.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Say hello to herO, the second player to win a GSL and SSL.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
This is so damm right
Tbf we also saw him target-firing speedbanes on creep. That's a bit more impressive
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 02:53 Shellshock wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:20 munch wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
No not really. The lvl of competition is very important and it will only go down from now on. In 2014 it was probably the highest we ever had though, way higher than in 2011. I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. He didn't even "dominate" the whole year considering his mediocre results after his first GSL win. Like i wouldn't even bring this up if he made ro8s or something (you onnly count championships anyway apparently) but he actually didn't even make it into ro16s. Let anyone else win a gsl and then do so badly afterwards and nobody would even dare to say these 6 months are part of "dominating the whole year", it's quite frankly absurd.
But yeah his later half was incredible but again, he had more chances to acually make his form count. If you still wanna paint that as a negative well it's your prerogative
I don't recognise the view to which the article ascribes. There's a lot of words just to describe the natural instability of SC2. It is natural that only a few players win and some players lose, to be replaced by newer champions.
Again a bit more on topic (though i think the discussion about Mvp fits the topic as well, kinda)
It's interesting that you mention Zest's looks as a deciding factor as well. I think this is fairly spot on and doesn't only apply to him. A lot of the big fan favorites are players who actually have the looks for it. At the same time other players who do fairly well but lack this factor are always in the shadows. Is it fair? No! But that's kinda how it works with fanbases (especially female fans often talk about this, not exclusively though tbh!)
I don't think narratives who exaggerate are all that bad in the grand scheme of things. ALmost nobody only ever looks at the cold data, we are emotional beings and that factors in a ton. So it's only natural that we embellish the feats of our most loved players to make them look even grander. Others who are fans of the other side will (most likely) argue against it but depending on the fanbase sizes one side will probably have a winner in the end. Some narratives will go down as "facts" while others will be forgotten because it doesn't stick. It makes the players and people in the scene appear grander than they really are (or less important like in the case of players like leenock, jjakji, etc). And there will be discussion, always these discussions...
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 02:53 Shellshock wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:20 munch wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
No not really. The lvl of competition is very important and it will only go down from now on. In 2014 it was probably the highest we ever had though, way higher than in 2011. I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. He didn't even "dominate" the whole year considering his mediocre results after his first GSL win. Like i wouldn't even bring this up if he made ro8s or something (you onnly count championships anyway apparently) but he actually didn't even make it into ro16s. Let anyone else win a gsl and then do so badly afterwards and nobody would even dare to say these 6 months are part of "dominating the whole year", it's quite frankly absurd.
But yeah his later half was incredible but again, he had more chances to acually make his form count. If you still wanna paint that as a negative well it's your prerogative
LOL love how you say things that aren't facts as facts, and then reference them to make a point. 2014 was the best how? because the kespa players had settled in and "everyone had figured out the game"? weren't there a lot more people playing in 2011 though, meaning there is more "COMPETITION"? so was the skill level better in 2014 than now? and the people who have been playing the game with extreme discipline since 2014....they haven't raised the bar for what we expect from pro players?
yes skill level is important i agree....but you can't just say that 2014 >2011...you tout so many of your opinions as facts.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 02:53 Shellshock wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:20 munch wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
No not really. The lvl of competition is very important and it will only go down from now on. In 2014 it was probably the highest we ever had though, way higher than in 2011. I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. He didn't even "dominate" the whole year considering his mediocre results after his first GSL win. Like i wouldn't even bring this up if he made ro8s or something (you onnly count championships anyway apparently) but he actually didn't even make it into ro16s. Let anyone else win a gsl and then do so badly afterwards and nobody would even dare to say these 6 months are part of "dominating the whole year", it's quite frankly absurd.
But yeah his later half was incredible but again, he had more chances to acually make his form count. If you still wanna paint that as a negative well it's your prerogative
LOL love how you say things that aren't facts as facts, and then reference them to make a point. 2014 was the best how? because the kespa players had settled in and "everyone had figured out the game"? weren't there a lot more people playing in 2011 though, meaning there is more "COMPETITION"? so was the skill level better in 2014 than now? and the people who have been playing the game with extreme discipline since 2014....they haven't raised the bar for what we expect from pro players?
yes skill level is important i agree....but you can't just say that 2014 >2011...you tout so many of your opinions as facts.
If we're just talking about how dominant a player was during a year the skill-level is irrelevant.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 02:53 Shellshock wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:20 munch wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
No not really. The lvl of competition is very important and it will only go down from now on. In 2014 it was probably the highest we ever had though, way higher than in 2011. I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. He didn't even "dominate" the whole year considering his mediocre results after his first GSL win. Like i wouldn't even bring this up if he made ro8s or something (you onnly count championships anyway apparently) but he actually didn't even make it into ro16s. Let anyone else win a gsl and then do so badly afterwards and nobody would even dare to say these 6 months are part of "dominating the whole year", it's quite frankly absurd.
But yeah his later half was incredible but again, he had more chances to acually make his form count. If you still wanna paint that as a negative well it's your prerogative
LOL love how you say things that aren't facts as facts, and then reference them to make a point. 2014 was the best how? because the kespa players had settled in and "everyone had figured out the game"? weren't there a lot more people playing in 2011 though, meaning there is more "COMPETITION"? so was the skill level better in 2014 than now? and the people who have been playing the game with extreme discipline since 2014....they haven't raised the bar for what we expect from pro players?
yes skill level is important i agree....but you can't just say that 2014 >2011...you tout so many of your opinions as facts.
I mean it doesn't even matter too much what year(s) exactly where the highest point of sc2. I think it is still fair to say that the kespa switch was incredibly important for the competitiveness. We had a new talent pool of players + the infrastructure to make use of it. Then proleague alone made sure that every player competing in it basically had to be on top of his gameplay at all times (realistically that's not possible, but the motivation surely was there for most players) Maybe 2011 had more players (not sure) but you just need to read interviews of players comparing kespa team houses to team houses before. Pretty big difference. I am not just saying that the skill lvl increased (it always does, at least strategy wise; we usually don't lose that knowledge) but that the competition was more fierce simply because the scene got more professional, by a lot. I think we should stop here though, this doesn't lead anywhere
On May 03 2017 03:33 ZertoN wrote: correct me if im wrong, but shouldnt writers at least try to hide their biases and write an objective article?
In this type of article, absolutely not. It is very clearly an opinionated piece, and does not try to hide that fact. Blatant lying or egregiously twisting facts would be something else, but arguing in favor of a strongly held opinion makes for interesting reading. I'm sure mizenhauer can respond himself if there is anything you think is actually false (in such a way that it cannot be argued), but beyond that is is all up in the air.
On May 03 2017 00:54 LtCalley wrote: you can't even COMPARE zest's 2014 to MVP's 2011, i'm sorry you just can't
6 premier titles vs. 3, 12 ro4 finishes vs. 6, MVP literally had TWICE, YES TWICE the results that Zest did. Say what you want to about the difference in frequency of premier tournaments (namely gsl) and you only further reinforce my point =/
zest's 2014 rivaling MVP's 2011 is a stretch, to say the LEAST
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Why do you only look at actual championships? What about all the mediocre results i just listed? WCG is not that impressive anyway, let's be real for a moment. You are saying extra tournaments is also a chance to do badly, well yes but it is a chance. If you are actually really at the top of your gameplay you would rather have a lot tournaments to play in and not be scared to do worse in the others. Fact is that Zest did well in every single tournament besides the blizzcon where he had to play the later crowned champion in the first round. At every other tournament he made at least ro8. Mvp did way worse, especially in the 6 months i talked about in the comment you quoted. Zest didn't win as much a) because there weren't that many tournaments and b) it was the most competitive era in sc2 period.
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote: [quote]
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Well code s titles then I think it is worthwhile to make a distinction here.
you can use statistics to back any point of view really.
but a major point you're missing here...which is GLARING... is the amount of tournaments MVP was in during 2011 as opposed to Zest's 2014. find out how many premier tournaments both players actually entered in, then come back to me :-p
Wait what? How did i miss that? It's a positive for Mvp, he had more chances. You simply try to paint it as a negative, which is hilarious. I wonder how many players who are at the peak of their gameplay would tell you that they want less tournaments to enter. Fact is that Mvp's results in the first half of 2011 aren't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. You even stated 2nd place in code a as if that would be an amazign result, when in reality it means that you didn't even play in code s. I somewhat blame stuchiu for this though, his constant Mvp circlejerk did build this narrative. Like when people read over and over again that Mvp was this god they will believe it in the end (that's kinda on topic of this article right )
Specifically you notice that a run of dominance from a great player usually runs for about 6 months to an year, except for Mvp whose dominance lasted the first 2 years of play. source
Yeah no not two years, in fact more like these 6 months mentioned in the same statement.
On May 03 2017 02:53 Shellshock wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:20 munch wrote:
On May 03 2017 02:04 Olli wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:58 LtCalley wrote:
On May 03 2017 01:43 The_Red_Viper wrote: [quote]
Zest's worst performance in 2014 was at blizzcon where he had to play life (who won the whole thing) in the first round and lost 2-3 If we exclude that it was a ro8 at an IEM and a ro8 in GSL.
Now let's look at Mvp's 2011:
After winning GSL in January he failed in GSL March with a ro24 finish, in GSL May he only played code a (got second there), lost in the ro32 in a GSL super tournament and in GSL July he failed again in the ro 24.
So from february till august he won that world championship gsl (which was a joke to begin with) and at the rest of the tournaments he did really badly. That were about 6 months of mediocre results until he stepped it up at the end of the year and actually had great results. If anyone else had the bad results of Mvp after winning that GSL the "reign" would have stopped in these 6 months for sure. No Mvp didn't dominate 2011, he dominated from august till the end of the year.
About the article: Well you are right that narratives trump actual analysis a lot. But this is simply the product of fanculture and happens everywhere. It's easier to say player x is bad (in the context of the very best) even though he plays in code s (almost) every season. Like you mention leenock here. The truth is that he will probably never be in another GSL final, i am sure he trains hard and is really good in general. But in korea he is still one of the weaker players if we only look at the korean scene. I think it's fine to build narratives this way overall, it shouldn't be too extreme (like with Byun and him being the best micro player ever, yadayada) though maybe i am just a little bit biased here and this is ok as well
zest winning his one gsl in 2014 is about the same as mvp winning code S twice in 2011. sorry, but a single kespa cup victory is not equivalent to winning blizzon 2011, MLG anaheim, and WCG 2011.
Two GSLs according to how the community counts them for Mvp and Life.
Let's be honest, calling any non-Code S tournament a GSL is a bit bullshit
Even the open seasons?
Nah because there you at least had a really hard format to overcome as well. So while it is different, it's still somewhat comparable.
considering the decreasing number of tournaments in starcraft 2 every year, by your logic, in 2025 when there is only one premier starcraft 2 tournament the whole year, the winner of that tournament will be the best player ever because he had a 1:1 premier tournament entry to championship ratio.
so yes in that light, it's a negative for MVP to have had more "opportunities"
No not really. The lvl of competition is very important and it will only go down from now on. In 2014 it was probably the highest we ever had though, way higher than in 2011. I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem. He didn't even "dominate" the whole year considering his mediocre results after his first GSL win. Like i wouldn't even bring this up if he made ro8s or something (you onnly count championships anyway apparently) but he actually didn't even make it into ro16s. Let anyone else win a gsl and then do so badly afterwards and nobody would even dare to say these 6 months are part of "dominating the whole year", it's quite frankly absurd.
But yeah his later half was incredible but again, he had more chances to acually make his form count. If you still wanna paint that as a negative well it's your prerogative
LOL love how you say things that aren't facts as facts, and then reference them to make a point. 2014 was the best how? because the kespa players had settled in and "everyone had figured out the game"? weren't there a lot more people playing in 2011 though, meaning there is more "COMPETITION"? so was the skill level better in 2014 than now? and the people who have been playing the game with extreme discipline since 2014....they haven't raised the bar for what we expect from pro players?
yes skill level is important i agree....but you can't just say that 2014 >2011...you tout so many of your opinions as facts.
If we're just talking about how dominant a player was during a year the skill-level is irrelevant.
i never said it was important regarding player dominance. the discussion switched when he responded with "I am not even arguing that Zest should be GOAT, but his 2014 was pretty impressive and Mvp's 2011 wasn't nearly as impressive as people make it seem." in regards to this, i agree with him that skill level is important (assessing impressiveness of zest's 2014 vs MVP's 2011)
On May 02 2017 22:50 TeamLiquid ESPORTS wrote: All of that changed with the release of LotV. ByuN started to build up steam from the get-go. His results in online tournaments captured the attention of foreign fans, just as his relatability and outgoing, everyman personality won over reluctant Korean fans. He gathered momentum as the year went on, picking up a larger and larger following as the results improved. By the time he seized GSL and BlizzCon as spoils of war, one would think he was the second coming of MVP. Scratch that, MVP wasn’t even worthy of fetching ByuN’s coffee.
For me what made ByuN so great was not his GSL, BlizzCon wins alone it is incredible win rate in online cups and ladder. I consider him the absolute best from about start of second GSL season until the new patch changes and here is why its so impressive.
I know a lot of people say only tournaments count, online games have no meaning etc., but if you have a 80% win rate it is a different story. I think people don't realize how incredible that is, but 80% win rate means you lose one game in five. This means you are actually invincible (100% win rate) and you occasionally make one mistake. Basically Byun had the game, in the version at that time, figured out mostly. (There were times he looked shaky, when he encountered people with different playstyles, he did not often encounter though. But in the end it didn't matter.) Actually for me it is more impressive if you have figured a game out than if you win a tournament. If you win in tournaments it means you are performing great (like playing at the upper limit of our potential performance distribution). If you win on ladder in addition it means your base skill is high. And in case of ByuN I think his base skill was so high back then, that performance didn't matter any more. That's actually what I would legitimately call domination and why its so impressive. I believe if there were no patches his domination would have lasted maybe forever. For me it's not an exaggeration to think of ByuN as greatest of all time. Of course this is debatable.
My point is you are acting in your article as if you were talking indisputable facts and this is just not true. There are legitimate reason why ByuN was considered as "greatest Terran in game history".
People give too much credit and add too much hindsight bias when analyzing tournament wins. Right now it seems to me that the base skill level of the top players are really close. So there is a lot more luck involved in winning tournaments: Imagine if you have 5 equally skilled players and let them play. Than the probability to win is 20%. Pretty low. I think it's pretty clear that ByuN is still good. He is surely not the absolute best right now, but I would say his chances to win a tournament aren't much lower than for anyone else. The reason for the lack of tournament wins is just that he isn't dominant anymore in this version of the game and he didn't get lucky enough yet. And in my opinion you need a lot of luck to win a tournament against many equally skilled players.
On May 03 2017 03:33 ZertoN wrote: correct me if im wrong, but shouldnt writers at least try to hide their biases and write an objective article?
In papers there are two kind of articles, reports and opinions. opinionated articles (like this one) are important because they shed some light on how others see something and are able to let you see the opinions of other people. It is less a news article and more of a very long comment on an article which expresses the writers opinion.
Excellent article, superbly written. But the premise is pretty self-evident. That's not to say that this article is superfluous, it's very important to remind ourselves that for all their hype and narrative and momentum, these progamers are still human and they make very human mistakes.
Players peak and slump, this is nothing new. Zest has had both unbelievable highs and shocking lows, but he's weathered them before and he can endure them now. He's carrying a huge legacy of greatness (the only other current pro holding multiple GSL Code S titles is INnoVation) and the impossibly high expectations of that burden are crushingly heavy. 2016 started amazingly well for Zest, and trailed off as the year went on. 2017 has started appallingly poorly, but there's still plenty of time and tournaments left to reverse the trend.
ByuN on the other hand, hasn't slumped nearly as hard as Zest. Sure, his Ro32 exit from GSL Season 1 was disappointing, to say the least, but other than that he's been doing respectably well. Semifinals at Gyeonggi, Ro8 at Katowice, and the people he's losing to are not huge underdogs. Dark and Stats are very much championship contenders in their own right, and it's hardly a mark of shame to fall in a Bo5 against such illustrious opponents. TvT definitely seems to be a weak spot for him, but his TvZ is still top-class. His current form might not be at the level of TY or INnoVation, but it would be quite a stretch to say he's not among the second-tier Terrans.
With greatness comes great expectations, and it's inevitable that sooner of later these progamers slip up. Nobody is perfect.
Jeez so many point to comment on, I'll just summerise:
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MVP "dominated" when it was easiest to win tournaments. The level of play wasn't close to the years after, there were countless more tournaments to compete in, and more importantly there were less "godlike" players to compete with. Yes he's one of the greats. But it's not enough to call him the absolute GOAT.
It's so hard to compare his run to that of Zest. Zest won a Code S, 2 korean majors, got 2nd at IEM, fell to the eventual champ at blizzcon, got close ro8/ro4 finishes in pretty much every other league. He also destroyed proleague, it's worth noting that beyond all-killing SKT, he was captain of KT when he lead them to win 2014 SPL. Zest dominated in an era where winning cups was a lot harder than in MVP's. You can argue for hours about which is more impressive.
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Now ByuN. I'll keep this one short. Yes he dominated late 2016 and won blizzcon, but tbh I dunno how I feel about calling him a GOAT terran. When he won GSl and BC it almost looked too easy. I feel like everyone else was slumping for those months, it seemed like for GSL and BC there were only 2 or 3 players that legit contested him.
Compare the competitiveness of late 2016 to now. Guys like TY, Inno, Maru, soO, aLive, herO, byuL, Classic are all big deals now. They could take a tournament, that couldn't have been said last year (yh ik TY was a threat but he choked in every ro8/4/final he got to).
Maybe they were lacking motivation due to KeSPA closing and ByuN was immune to that. idk. But byuN is still in form at least, he's not like Zest who just can't play anymore. But winning this year is just gonna be a harder.
On May 02 2017 23:24 terran4lyfe wrote: TL writers are trash, always fawning over the same player and bashing others and viewing the SC2 fanbase as flithy know-nothing plebians.
So, if someone comes into your house and starts insulting you and/or your family you don't throw him out? This guy even got only thrown out for a limited amount of time. I think that's actually generous.
I think SC2 has an issue on how unstable "superstars" are. I don't know much about BW but it seems that big stars were dominant for long periods of time and became stable referents (Jaedong, Flash, Bisu, Stork...). Viewers of any sport (Esport or traditional) want a sense of understanding and stability about which ones are "the best, which ones are "rising" and which ones are "going down". So i don't blame caster/writters for doing that, in a sense we all want that. In SC2 Esport all of this happens so fast that expectations last a lot longer that reality.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
What bothers me the most isn't that casters are overselling a player, since they're pretty much forced to do so to induce hype and excitement. I'm not annoyed by Tastosis screaming about Byun's micro, since he is probably the best terran micro ATM.
On the other hand, i'm much more bothered by casters to repeat over and over again the liturgy about how "this is the best state SC2's always been". It may come from my personal beef with HOTS and LOTV, but throughout terrible states of design or balance hearing casters chanting about how great the game "is right now" was especially infuriating. But it also has a direct repercution on what's described here. Because HOTS and then LOTV traded off much of WOL's strategic components for execution and micro ones, the best players in the game are mostly very good at execution, not at being a good strategist.
I was already scoffing at casters shouting "great forcefields !", "huge storm !", "massive fungal !" and so on during WOL. But now, the players being hyped are mostly very good at execution, and seeing casters praising that while mostly dissmissing other aspects of the play is very annoying. However, i do admit that because LOTV is LOTV, there's often not much to talk about or praise than the execution. When every TvZ is a double medivac marine drop with stim, you can't really talk about the build, strategic decisions, or gameplan. Only about "oh he focus fired 4 banes in a row how amazing !".
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
On May 03 2017 11:36 Thaniri wrote: Calling Zest manly is pretty funny. Reminds me of how I would be the most muscular guy at any LAN I went to, but otherwise completely insignificant.
Finally someone says it :p
Now Slivko...that mfer was JACKED. Guy would kill you with BL/Infestor imbalance and dare you to whine.
I started reading and I couldn't stop. Good piece of writing here. Well done ! I can only speak for myself : I have favorite players all the time. They tend to be zerg, usually as that is the only race I play. I loved Idra for example and I was crushed every time I saw him fail, especially since I thought the only thing standing in his way was himself. I root for Scarlett every time I see her play, and it pains me when she doesn't win or when she seems to loose interest in the game. Snute earned my respect a long time ago, and with his stream he won my admiration and I cheer for him every time he plays. I used to love Life but he disappointed me completely. Dark is starting to grow on me, but we'll see. There might be a lot of truth in your article but for me, the players that do nothing for me personally , I watch them for the games and judge them by their results. I am not invested that much in the artificial narrative created around them. If they play well and win I enjoy the games, if they loose , they loose , better luck next time. People love winners, but whether you're number one or 200 in the world, for any other sport , you can still make a living. In all sports you will be remembered if you were good, but if you were really good your results will talk for you over time. And maybe the perception will not be the actual reality , but that happens with any sport.
The StarCraft community has a nasty habit of dissecting everything of value to them. Be it professional players, teams, organizations or scenes, they place their objects of affection under a microscope to scrutinize, analyze, criticize and question them from every angle...
Every good article always begins with making fun of the intended audience.
Thus, I've never completely read a good article... this one is no different.
The StarCraft community has a nasty habit of dissecting everything of value to them. Be it professional players, teams, organizations or scenes, they place their objects of affection under a microscope to scrutinize, analyze, criticize and question them from every angle...
Every good article always begins with making fun of the intended audience.
Thus, I've never completely read a good article... this one is no different.
Well... i appreciate the article, but the subject itself seems more like a reason for writing exercise than something worth analysing. No revelations really, no myth busting. "They just got their strategies figured out while meta changed". Well... it's the most common set of stereotypes, if you ask me.
It's really interesting to see these players being dissected (right in the continuation of your intro about the community doing that for everything of value) beyond one- or two-word archetypes that don't really tell their story but just give only a small hint at what a player career looks or looked like.
It feels like these simple archetypes, categories can be useful for describing players quickly to newcomers to the game, but past that, it's so oversimplifying that it becomes quite a shame to summarize so much when there's an interesting and unique story behind a player's career.
Oh and one little fix I'd make (j/k):
Ultimately, the history of StarCraft 2 is recorded by the community rather than the players (and of course Liquipedia)
But a lot of the stereotypes are fed from the classifications given by TL writers, like the Bomber Law, Royal roaders and so on...
We do create these archetypes sometimes to build storylines, which is necessary in a way for us to write articles. But from there on it's largely out of our hands. Sometimes these stick for years (Bomber's Law is a good example), sometimes they don't. We have little to no influence on what casters, other community figures, other websites (Reddit) or even the community itself come up with or turn into a "thing" that sticks around. The trick in my opinion is not to get too caught up in them and judge a player only by those. There isn't one definitive story behind a player. You could tell their story in a thousand different ways if only you're given the necessary information and perspective.
But yes, you're right that we are partially to blame for creating the expectations and image the community has of players.
I think of Zest in a similar way to Squirtle and Dear: they all bashed everyone in macro games and seemed flawless for a while and then dissappeared...
Squirtles reign could have been longer if he wasn't soul crushed, and Dear only managed to dominate two or three tournaments before he vanished. Zest on the other hand, kept going for a year and a half, because he was a beast.
I still remember those final games squirtle played in the GSL (that loss despite stellar micro on neo planet s!) which seemed in a way to be the start of a comeback, but alas, it never happened. Similar story for dear. Zest can still do it, and he probably will...
I like how the response to this post actually just kind of confirms what the article is covering.
Nice article, I actually agree in general. I mean no harm by writing this but this is just one example of how people try to project their hopes and dreams of success and happiness onto people who actually achieve them. And it is a totally normal phenomenon (I guess the most common example would be children and the expectations / wishes projected on them by their parents), nonetheless a dreadful one.
And actually, one has to admire those kids / young adults who deal with this pressure the whole time. I pay respect to all who try.
On May 03 2017 01:42 Shellshock wrote: TL trying to prop up TaeJa again with his 0 korean titles. will probably get another terran of the year award
Yeah Taeja getting over praised on TL seems a bit too common. And the defense of his foreign titles is that he beat X (high level Korean) in the finals or Ro4...as if this is equal to beating X (high level Korean) in the qualifiers, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro4, and Finals. Sorry for digressing from the main point of this article though.
"It’s easy to forget every player in the Ro32 is in the 99th percentile of all StarCraft players. The difference in skill between a gatekeeper and Stats seems huge within the game, but the gap is composed of an accumulation of minor details. In reality they are the best of the best. To forget that fact is to undermine a player’s legitimacy. Moreso it whitewashes how hard it is to even maintain a presence in Code S."
I don't think it's easy to forget this. I was just at DreamHack Austin and if any Code S Korean was placed (that's been playing in Korea) into that tournament you'd probably have to concede that they'd be the favorite to win the entire thing or at least pencil them into the Ro4. We've seen foreign hopes get smashed by B-tier Koreans or A-tiers in poor form and we aren't ever surprised by this.
I'd also go farther to say that the reason that people are judged relative to where they have been before, is because we want to see consistent increases in skill until a very high level is reached and if there is a drop off in a results, we'd like to still see good showings (I would argue Byun falls under this category, I've still seen a lot of brilliance in the multiple series he's lost in 2017).
When you see players reach great heights and fall off hard with consistent poor outings (Leenock and Jjakji vs basically every top tier protoss during HotS). What else can you think besides...their lack of consistency and failure to improve with the pack diminishes their championships. Compared to INnoVation, who's results slumped at times, but you could always tell the skill and understanding was there, and that he'd be back on top soon enough. (Life definitely falls into this category too, but he's broken all of our hearts and it's sad to mention him).
My hope for Sc2 (which is likely an irrational one) is that the consistency of the top Code S players will be more similar to professional tennis (the premier 1v1 sport because I don't consider golf a sport). Over the last 15 years we saw Roger Federer win 18 majors, Rafael Nadal win 14, and Novak Djokavic win 12. All of these guys had at least 1 year where they won at least 3 majors in a row and weren't making the finals in 1 major and then dropping out before the 4th round in the next. There were 60 majors during this time and 44 were won by these guys, the other 16 will be remembered as fierce competitors of high skill that will be remembered as elite players but aren't legends. Basically every E-sport has shown to be more volatile than this, but it'd be nice if the results of the best players were CLOSER to this level of consistency.
Yeah Taeja getting over praised on TL seems a bit too common. And the defense of his foreign titles is that he beat X (high level Korean) in the finals or Ro4...as if this is equal to beating X (high level Korean) in the qualifiers, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro4, and Finals.
Or the people praising Taeja actually watched the games and didn't just check the results. You can look at tournaments, matches and individual games, and tally results and calculate strength of opponent. But you can also watch a player play and see how good they are. In sports it's known as "the eye test" and it refers to, all data aside, how good does a player look when you watch them play. There's nothing wrong with having attempts at objective arguments based on results (futile as they may be) but you can't dismiss the opinions of people who have been watching/playing SC for over a decade just because they're not attempting to play your game. People who watched all these great players play in the context of their eras are allowed to just assert an opinion. If a consensus forms out of all those opinions, then it deserves some respect.
In basketball, they've been keeping stats well beyond win/loss for decades. But analytics have only recently begun to advance to the point of being able to create some deeper and more meaningful conclusions about players' performance from these stats. Some players of the past who were praised by the eye test but did not have the raw stats to support that praise have been vindicated by advanced analytics finding ways to support the effectiveness of those players. Compared to SC2, where we don't even keep any stats beyond win/loss, we are a bit helpless in comparing the abilities of players.
It always surprises me a bit when people get so involved in an argument totally based on results. It does not even require any expertise of SC2 or knowledge of the scene at all. It all boils down to on win/loss and strength of opponent and is basically an exercise in statistical analysis or something. Give a guy educated on those things a data dump and that's that. What is the point? Why come to a forum of SC2 fans to do a math problem? Watch the game, discuss the game. Taeja was a fucking beast and anyone who watched him play with some decent understanding of the game knows that.
It's fascinating how the simplification of narratives occurs in esports, just as it does in traditional sports, even though most esports fans/players/voices don't have a history of following traditional sports. It's equally fascinating to see the exact same backlash against lazy cliches, and call for more nuanced discussions.
On May 03 2017 22:00 neptunusfisk wrote: I think of Zest in a similar way to Squirtle and Dear: they all bashed everyone in macro games and seemed flawless for a while and then dissappeared...
Squirtles reign could have been longer if he wasn't soul crushed, and Dear only managed to dominate two or three tournaments before he vanished. Zest on the other hand, kept going for a year and a half, because he was a beast.
I still remember those final games squirtle played in the GSL (that loss despite stellar micro on neo planet s!) which seemed in a way to be the start of a comeback, but alas, it never happened. Similar story for dear. Zest can still do it, and he probably will...
On May 04 2017 05:34 Waxangel wrote: It's fascinating how the simplification of narratives occurs in esports, just as it does in traditional sports, even though most esports fans/players/voices don't have a history of following traditional sports. It's equally fascinating to see the exact same backlash against lazy cliches, and call for more nuanced discussions.
I don't really find it neither fascinating nor surprising. Humans are humans - what can one expect?
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
What bothers me the most isn't that casters are overselling a player, since they're pretty much forced to do so to induce hype and excitement. I'm not annoyed by Tastosis screaming about Byun's micro, since he is probably the best terran micro ATM.
On the other hand, i'm much more bothered by casters to repeat over and over again the liturgy about how "this is the best state SC2's always been". It may come from my personal beef with HOTS and LOTV, but throughout terrible states of design or balance hearing casters chanting about how great the game "is right now" was especially infuriating. But it also has a direct repercution on what's described here. Because HOTS and then LOTV traded off much of WOL's strategic components for execution and micro ones, the best players in the game are mostly very good at execution, not at being a good strategist.
I was already scoffing at casters shouting "great forcefields !", "huge storm !", "massive fungal !" and so on during WOL. But now, the players being hyped are mostly very good at execution, and seeing casters praising that while mostly dissmissing other aspects of the play is very annoying. However, i do admit that because LOTV is LOTV, there's often not much to talk about or praise than the execution. When every TvZ is a double medivac marine drop with stim, you can't really talk about the build, strategic decisions, or gameplan. Only about "oh he focus fired 4 banes in a row how amazing !".
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
This is the best comment on an interesting and discussion provoking piece. Someone else also commented on an analysis of Dear's rise and fall which would be very interesting to read,certainly more so than hearing about Mvp again.
Also, to add to the never ending debate, like many I also feel Mvp's achievement s have been blown out of proportion (especially his '4th miracle', and although I'm not a Taeja fan I think, at least until ByuN, he showed the highest level play of anyone I saw (which isn't to say he is the GOAT)
On May 03 2017 16:00 AzAlexZ wrote: Do one for Neeb
Neeb's one would be easier. I don't think he ever peaked and then dropped off in skill, but expectations were blown out of proportion for him cause of KeSPA Cup hype. To any casual you might think that if he can win a KR major then he is a top 5 player or something, which would make sense.
Neeb was (and still is maybe?) the best disruptor player in the world. It should be no suprise that he won a cup playing disruptor vs disruptor every game (against opponents which barely knew how to use them properly). The problem came about because people thought he would naturally dominate as hard in other matchups and metas. That's where expectations come in. But he's still a top foreigner, heck I was favour him in a bo7 vs Trap any day.
I see people relating Starcraft to games like tennis, I mean yes it's 1v1 but it can never be as consistant. New maps/metas/patches/expansions change everything about how a game is played (never played tennis idk if theres a deeper meta to it). Neeb is an example of how good you can be at a specific meta or matchup.
But a lot of the stereotypes are fed from the classifications given by TL writers, like the Bomber Law, Royal roaders and so on...
We have little to no influence on what casters, other community figures, other websites (Reddit) or even the community itself come up with or turn into a "thing" that sticks around.
I guess no one remembers that cringy forced meme of "elfi is god" which was shitposted even by staff members.
Yeah Taeja getting over praised on TL seems a bit too common. And the defense of his foreign titles is that he beat X (high level Korean) in the finals or Ro4...as if this is equal to beating X (high level Korean) in the qualifiers, Ro32, Ro16, Ro8, Ro4, and Finals.
Or the people praising Taeja actually watched the games and didn't just check the results. You can look at tournaments, matches and individual games, and tally results and calculate strength of opponent. But you can also watch a player play and see how good they are. In sports it's known as "the eye test" and it refers to, all data aside, how good does a player look when you watch them play. There's nothing wrong with having attempts at objective arguments based on results (futile as they may be) but you can't dismiss the opinions of people who have been watching/playing SC for over a decade just because they're not attempting to play your game. People who watched all these great players play in the context of their eras are allowed to just assert an opinion. If a consensus forms out of all those opinions, then it deserves some respect.
Hey man, I don't disagree with him being a top player of all time, but when I see TL writers making GOAT lists that put Taeja higher than INnoVation...I have to disagree and think they're not being as objective as they should. Taeja has shown amazing play, and that he can compete and beat the best in the world. He was Life's bane at a lot of foreign tournaments in HotS. But I have a feeling that if all of those foreign tournaments had GSL player pools he would not have 11 premier titles.
And in my post I'm basically using your same train of logic and applying it to Byun's play during 2017 and saying he's still playing like a champion.
But a lot of the stereotypes are fed from the classifications given by TL writers, like the Bomber Law, Royal roaders and so on...
We have little to no influence on what casters, other community figures, other websites (Reddit) or even the community itself come up with or turn into a "thing" that sticks around.
I guess no one remembers that cringy forced meme of "elfi is god" which was shitposted even by staff members.
you're illiterate if that's what you got from this article
I might be wrong, and clearly late to the party, but i feel this has less to do with results and more to do with actual gameplay.
look at marus results last year, and no one was like ah hes terrible now, yeah he lost but they where really close games. zest losses are to put it lightly not close. and i think it comes down to gameplay over results but thats just my 2 cents.
On May 03 2017 11:00 Oalfredo77 wrote: I think SC2 has an issue on how unstable "superstars" are. I don't know much about BW but it seems that big stars were dominant for long periods of time and became stable referents (Jaedong, Flash, Bisu, Stork...). Viewers of any sport (Esport or traditional) want a sense of understanding and stability about which ones are "the best, which ones are "rising" and which ones are "going down". So i don't blame caster/writters for doing that, in a sense we all want that. In SC2 Esport all of this happens so fast that expectations last a lot longer that reality.
This is what I'm most looking forward post-LOTV. Although a lot of those amazing storylines will never have parity with SC2. We're not really going to sit through of years of zerg domination without a kneejerk patch, for example.
On May 03 2017 16:00 AzAlexZ wrote: Do one for Neeb
Neeb's one would be easier. I don't think he ever peaked and then dropped off in skill, but expectations were blown out of proportion for him cause of KeSPA Cup hype. To any casual you might think that if he can win a KR major then he is a top 5 player or something, which would make sense.
Neeb was (and still is maybe?) the best disruptor player in the world. It should be no suprise that he won a cup playing disruptor vs disruptor every game (against opponents which barely knew how to use them properly). The problem came about because people thought he would naturally dominate as hard in other matchups and metas. That's where expectations come in. But he's still a top foreigner, heck I was favour him in a bo7 vs Trap any day.
I see people relating Starcraft to games like tennis, I mean yes it's 1v1 but it can never be as consistant. New maps/metas/patches/expansions change everything about how a game is played (never played tennis idk if theres a deeper meta to it). Neeb is an example of how good you can be at a specific meta or matchup.
Why did the Koreans play Disrupters if they knew neeb was better and that wasn't the Korean meta going into the tournament?
1.) Neeb wasn't that well known. So maybe they didn't realize neeb was so good with disruptors. So they underestimated him.
2.) Maybe Neeb played in a way that makes the opponent likely to go disruptors?
3.) When you make a decision in SC2 I bet most of the time it is an automated response and that's not easy to change. It's not like you actually have time to calm down and think during a game. You have to be decisive. So I would say they didn't think a lot?
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
On May 02 2017 23:21 MrMischelito wrote: "There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”."
what is the reason?
Was kind of curious about that one as well...
If it is about Byun target firing Banes of creep... they are usually non speed banes and due to the Hotkey Change "all" you have to do to target fire the banes in lotv is hold down A and hover over them and they will die. So you no longer need to a click them and be scared of missing one.
But kind of weird to write such a statement without offering a closing to it.
Do you mean using a keyboard capable of "Rapid Fire" hotkeying a la JaKaTak?
I think it's futile to compare champions from different eras, because the necessary skillset to win a GSL is always changing slightly over time. When Zest and Byun had their respective periods of dominance, it was awesome. What's wrong with that, exactly?
Starcraft as a game (Both Brood War and SC2 I feel) has varying periods in time in the professional tournament scene where sometimes strategy is more important, and sometimes mechanics are more important. Sometimes a single style is extremely powerful until it gets 'solved' by the community at large, which is my impression of Byun when he was winning everything.
But I agree that the SC community has this weird fascination with picking the "best" player. In my opinion there's only one "best" player ever, and that is Flash in Brood War. This is because of his actual win-rate, tournaments results, and the fact that he has more or less stayed on top for several years without being dethroned.
I wonder if players like Inno, Zest, and even sOs can be classed as 'impact' players. In sports, they're players who, on their best day, are unstoppable. But on other days, they look mortal, a shade of their true self. So they can go through periods of mediocrity, yet constantly hit peaks of absolute dominance.
In SC2, this happens because their true skill lies in finding an element in the gameplay or meta that suits their play-style (whether macro, micro, game-sense, etc.), and 'abusing' it to a point where others cannot reach. And the reason why their highs and lows fluctuates so much is due to the constant patch and meta changes in SC2.
(Sorry, I wish I can explain this better, but I've only had my first coffee of the morning )
On May 02 2017 23:21 MrMischelito wrote: "There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”."
what is the reason?
Was kind of curious about that one as well...
If it is about Byun target firing Banes of creep... they are usually non speed banes and due to the Hotkey Change "all" you have to do to target fire the banes in lotv is hold down A and hover over them and they will die. So you no longer need to a click them and be scared of missing one.
But kind of weird to write such a statement without offering a closing to it.
I dont think any pros use this. Plz tell me who does if you know of anyone.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
I mean ToD once casted WCS while still in Premier league, so did HuK iirc.
On May 06 2017 10:09 RKC wrote: I wonder if players like Inno, Zest, and even sOs can be classed as 'impact' players. In sports, they're players who, on their best day, are unstoppable. But on other days, they look mortal, a shade of their true self. So they can go through periods of mediocrity, yet constantly hit peaks of absolute dominance.
In SC2, this happens because their true skill lies in finding an element in the gameplay or meta that suits their play-style (whether macro, micro, game-sense, etc.), and 'abusing' it to a point where others cannot reach. And the reason why their highs and lows fluctuates so much is due to the constant patch and meta changes in SC2.
(Sorry, I wish I can explain this better, but I've only had my first coffee of the morning )
Agree with this, some people say the reason why nobody has been able to dominate sc2 the same way Flash/Jaedong etc have dominated bw is because the game is more "volatile" but I don't agree with this. I mean we have seen periods where a player was extremely dominant in a specific meta (PartinG 2015 pvt, Zest early 2016 pvt, Inno 2013 tvz, soO zvz) but they aren't able to keep it up because the meta always changes and the things that made them dominate aren't as important anymore.
Think about it: Inno was extremely dominant in 2013 then mines got nerfed - he couldn't adapt and slumped. Zest dominated 2014 then among other changes widow mines got rebuffed + added shield damage - he couldn't adapt and slumped. Life dominated late 2014/early 2015 then Swarmhosts got nerfed - he couldn't adapt and slumped.
I believe if we wouldn't have those constant balance changes the players at the top would be much more stable. I don't even think Flash would have been able to become a bonjwa in bw if the game would be patched like sc2. + Show Spoiler +
And if BL/ Infestor wouldn't have been nerfed every gsl final would be Sniper vs RorO
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
I mean ToD once casted WCS while still in Premier league, so did HuK iirc.
Apollo was a better commentator than them, though.
As for the post above me, just wanted to say that Life's dominance in early 2015 had nothing to do with SHs. It was him dismantling every Terran with muta/ling/bane. Then people started meching, and he was never really good against that.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
I mean ToD once casted WCS while still in Premier league, so did HuK iirc.
Apollo was a better commentator than them, though.
As for the post above me, just wanted to say that Life's dominance in early 2015 had nothing to do with SHs. It was him dismantling every Terran with muta/ling/bane. Then people started meching, and he was never really good against that.
His slump ("slump"?) already started well before almost every TvZ in Korea was mech, too. And it's not like he ever relied much on SH to win ZvP.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
I mean ToD once casted WCS while still in Premier league, so did HuK iirc.
Apollo was a better commentator than them, though.
As for the post above me, just wanted to say that Life's dominance in early 2015 had nothing to do with SHs. It was him dismantling every Terran with muta/ling/bane. Then people started meching, and he was never really good against that.
Yeah but people started meching because of the SH nerf so Life's slump was at least partly caused by a balance change.
But a lot of the stereotypes are fed from the classifications given by TL writers, like the Bomber Law, Royal roaders and so on...
We have little to no influence on what casters, other community figures, other websites (Reddit) or even the community itself come up with or turn into a "thing" that sticks around.
I guess no one remembers that cringy forced meme of "elfi is god" which was shitposted even by staff members.
you're illiterate if that's what you got from this article
Nice insult man, I wasn't even talking about the article though.
On May 06 2017 10:09 RKC wrote: I wonder if players like Inno, Zest, and even sOs can be classed as 'impact' players. In sports, they're players who, on their best day, are unstoppable. But on other days, they look mortal, a shade of their true self. So they can go through periods of mediocrity, yet constantly hit peaks of absolute dominance.
In SC2, this happens because their true skill lies in finding an element in the gameplay or meta that suits their play-style (whether macro, micro, game-sense, etc.), and 'abusing' it to a point where others cannot reach. And the reason why their highs and lows fluctuates so much is due to the constant patch and meta changes in SC2.
(Sorry, I wish I can explain this better, but I've only had my first coffee of the morning )
Agree with this, some people say the reason why nobody has been able to dominate sc2 the same way Flash/Jaedong etc have dominated bw is because the game is more "volatile" but I don't agree with this. I mean we have seen periods where a player was extremely dominant in a specific meta (PartinG 2015 pvt, Zest early 2016 pvt, Inno 2013 tvz, soO zvz) but they aren't able to keep it up because the meta always changes and the things that made them dominate aren't as important anymore.
Think about it: Inno was extremely dominant in 2013 then mines got nerfed - he couldn't adapt and slumped. Zest dominated 2014 then among other changes widow mines got rebuffed + added shield damage - he couldn't adapt and slumped. Life dominated late 2014/early 2015 then Swarmhosts got nerfed - he couldn't adapt and slumped.
I believe if we wouldn't have those constant balance changes the players at the top would be much more stable. I don't even think Flash would have been able to become a bonjwa in bw if the game would be patched like sc2. + Show Spoiler +
And if BL/ Infestor wouldn't have been nerfed every gsl final would be Sniper vs RorO
Thanks, good to know I'm not alone feeling this
I can imagine how frustrating it can be, being a pro in SC2. You spend hours practising and refining a particular skill to give you an edge, pull ahead of the pack... only for your 'edge' to get nerfed. Sure, all sports do evolve over time (e.g. slower tennis courts killing off serve-and-volley play-style), but at least the meta changes more gradually which giving ample time for pros to adapt. In SC2, meta changes are so much more sudden and quicker.
In a sense, SC2 patches (even within a particular expansion i.e. WoL, HoTS and LoTV) seem to 'reset' the game altogether. So it's not really surprising even the greatest pros can't keep up their form.
I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
I think Life did more damage than he helped. Life was fantastic but the fact that he was fantastic is what made him being a matchfixer that much worse. If he didn't exist someone else would be the second greatest player of all time, but we might not have had our Savior
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
I think Life did more damage than he helped. Life was fantastic but the fact that he was fantastic is what made him being a matchfixer that much worse. If he didn't exist someone else would be the second greatest player of all time, but we might not have had our Savior
How ironic that a "Savior" means the exact opposite of what a savior typically does.
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
I think Life did more damage than he helped. Life was fantastic but the fact that he was fantastic is what made him being a matchfixer that much worse. If he didn't exist someone else would be the second greatest player of all time, but we might not have had our Savior
Playing what if, I see some more wins for Parting and Taeja had Life not been there in the tournaments he won. Obviously things would be unpredictibly different, but I still don't think it's fair to just say it would've been the same with another player, maybe resultwise, but in play it's like day and night. Parting is a player with enough skill that maybe he could've done something similar and Taeja as well, but who's not to say that Life was the factor to push these players to their limit in trying to overcome Life. Lets say Bomber would've been the GOAT had Life not been there, I really don't think the skill is at the same level at all, or maybe you mean a guy we never heard of would've taken his place, well that could happen, but what are the odds he would've jumped to the same level and also had the luck to do so, it's definitely not guaranteed.
Oh yeah, your article pointing out 2 storylines where people adapted to the new meta/Bonjwas-are-not-a-thing was very interesting. I'm just annoyed with the constant "they weren't good back then, wake up sheeple" every other paragraph.
This dogged determination happened to coincide with LotV changes that stressed the primacy of multitasking at the expense of simplifying overall strategy.
... In retrospect one could hardly blame figureheads for ballooning ByuN to the status of living legend ...
There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”.
You're an angry old man yelling at clouds. People get better at videogames as time goes.
Oh yeah, your article pointing out 2 storylines where people adapted to the new meta/Bonjwas-are-not-a-thing was very interesting. I'm just annoyed with the constant "they weren't good back then, wake up sheeple" every other paragraph.
This dogged determination happened to coincide with LotV changes that stressed the primacy of multitasking at the expense of simplifying overall strategy.
There’s a good reason we rarely saw this pre-LotV. No, it had nothing to do with players being “worse”.
You're an angry old man yelling at clouds. People get better at videogames as time goes.
You haven't even figured out that it wasn't me who wrote the article, which is why I doubt your reading comprehension.
And you're entitled to the opinion that everyone gets better over time. There's no proof of that at all, there's a good amount of pros who wouldn't agree with you and I personally think you're dead wrong for a good number of reasons (talent pool has shrunk massively, tons of top end players retired, professional team structure in Korea is dead, foreigners actually figure the game out before Koreans do nowadays), but that's fine, you're entitled to that opinion. Good day!
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
I think Life did more damage than he helped. Life was fantastic but the fact that he was fantastic is what made him being a matchfixer that much worse. If he didn't exist someone else would be the second greatest player of all time, but we might not have had our Savior
Playing what if, I see some more wins for Parting and Taeja had Life not been there in the tournaments he won. Obviously things would be unpredictibly different, but I still don't think it's fair to just say it would've been the same with another player, maybe resultwise, but in play it's like day and night. Parting is a player with enough skill that maybe he could've done something similar and Taeja as well, but who's not to say that Life was the factor to push these players to their limit in trying to overcome Life. Lets say Bomber would've been the GOAT had Life not been there, I really don't think the skill is at the same level at all, or maybe you mean a guy we never heard of would've taken his place, well that could happen, but what are the odds he would've jumped to the same level and also had the luck to do so, it's definitely not guaranteed.
Why do people act like Life was super dominant all the time or something? He got shat on pretty regularly like every other top player.
By the time BlizzCon rolled around, every single caster of note banded together to systematically erase all memory of StarCraft 2 prior to that moment. The agreed upon tagline was “highest skill era”. They had an unspoken contract to be as relentlessly optimistic as possible, and that involved praising all aspects of the game at a breathless pace. Since ByuN was the latest Terran champion he had to be the greatest Terran in the game’s history. Maru's micro against Protoss was irrelevant. GuMiho's drop harass was too boring to remember. TaeJa’s reactionary prowess was left unmentioned; beyond early ravager pushes, Terran didn’t even bother to defend anymore. The casters drilled this rhetoric into the minds of the community every chance they got. Whether it was a proper reaction to events was besides the point. It culminated in a Dada-esque scene where Tasteless and Artosis were transformed into gushing cheerleaders over ByuN target-firing slow banes off creep. Listening to their praise alone you’d think it was the epitome of TvZ fights.
Also, what we have to notice is that the level of analysis by casters dropped hugely since WOL. I've seen Dark rolling over every single terran during HOTS with banes/roaches/corruptors because everyone was going biomine because marine/tanks sucked against mutas, and i've never heard a single caster mention that. Only that "Dark is the best TvZ in the world !". And with LOTV, it's even worse. I've heard casters say countless time that gateball can't beat bio with medivacs and stim, and act baffled when a protoss player did, praising him in a general way with no explanation whatsoever. More specifically, i've never heard any caster talk about the huge influence of guardian shield, the 1 native armor on the adept the marauder nerf. How bio vs gateball fights usually revolved around guardian shield heavily lowering marauder attacks, or how some terran players manually position the marauders in front against adept heavy compositions to protect the marines. I've seen Maru destroy adept/sentries army with that, but without the casters even mentionning it. It'd be like WOL casters commentating bio/vikings vs gate/colossi fight without explaning mentionning how did the vikings perform against the colossi.
I guess it's because casters don't really play the game as much as before? Or that they're less interested in the game? I dunno, and maybe i missed some good analysis during casts, but to conclude i'd say players are praised mainly on their execution and not the other components of their play, and that both those aspects and the execution are often not analysed at all, with casters only chanting the "Byun/Zest/Dark/etc is sooooo gooooood". The state of the game, the players, everything is dumbed down to being "sooo goood".
The caster now are way better and play the game more then at any era, we use to have people like Husky, Kaelaris, Apollo or even HOTS Day 9 who barelly played the game. Now outside of Tastless, all the caster are High Master or GM at the game and played a hell of a lot of games. In Austin all the caster were GM level player (outside of maybe Maynard I don't really now his level).
Apollo was GM or at least top masters with random, and the best caster SC2 ever had in my book.
I mean ToD once casted WCS while still in Premier league, so did HuK iirc.
Apollo was a better commentator than them, though.
As for the post above me, just wanted to say that Life's dominance in early 2015 had nothing to do with SHs. It was him dismantling every Terran with muta/ling/bane. Then people started meching, and he was never really good against that.
Yeah but people started meching because of the SH nerf so Life's slump was at least partly caused by a balance change.
I'd like to disagree with this. If you're talking about Life's loss to ForGG's mech at Dreamhack Winter, that was just a small hiccup because literally no Terran had tried mech before this. Then Life went back into his Zerg cave and became good against mech. And iirc, Life went on to wreck nearly every Terran (including ForGG in an online cup) before Dream came into the scene.
At that point in time Life still had the motivation to perform well. Life finds a way regardless of balance patch if he wants to. The only hard Life counter is Life himself (and Taeja pre-Blizzcon 2014).
Also you say Life was dominant in only one period which is false. He was dominant in 2013, 2014, and 2015 just at the very end and start of each year which was when the $100,000 Blizzcon championship came around. Otherwise yeah, he was garbage because he didn't care but Life WAS the person to beat at these times.
On May 07 2017 06:35 ejozl wrote: I think Life is very relevant in this discussion. It almost feels like everyone is trying to forcefully forget his skill, achievements and impact(positive) on the game.
100% agreed, had the exact same feeling. I hate how some regard his mistakes as if he shot Kennedy or something. Its just fucking ridiculous. Yes he damaged the sc2 scene during the scandal, yes a lot not just a little, but then again before all that scandal, the community and the scene entirely benefitted from his competing tremendously, a lot more than any damage he caused. On 7pm news tonight, kids make mistakes and water is wet, stay tuned for more. But i am only gold league so no one will give two thin-sliced fucks about what i think. Yes yes i know i was offtopic, rant over, carry on, move along
I think Life did more damage than he helped. Life was fantastic but the fact that he was fantastic is what made him being a matchfixer that much worse. If he didn't exist someone else would be the second greatest player of all time, but we might not have had our Savior
Playing what if, I see some more wins for Parting and Taeja had Life not been there in the tournaments he won. Obviously things would be unpredictibly different, but I still don't think it's fair to just say it would've been the same with another player, maybe resultwise, but in play it's like day and night. Parting is a player with enough skill that maybe he could've done something similar and Taeja as well, but who's not to say that Life was the factor to push these players to their limit in trying to overcome Life. Lets say Bomber would've been the GOAT had Life not been there, I really don't think the skill is at the same level at all, or maybe you mean a guy we never heard of would've taken his place, well that could happen, but what are the odds he would've jumped to the same level and also had the luck to do so, it's definitely not guaranteed.
Why do people act like Life was super dominant all the time or something? He got shat on pretty regularly like every other top player.
Let's be realistic, when Life was at his peak (November to March-ish), he was literally crushing everyone. From time to time there were insurgents like ForGG, Dream, but in the next series he met these players he would most of the time beat them because he would adapt and find a way.
Like post March up to November again every year he would get fucked by every player in existence though because he would stop caring again.
I agree on most of those points, but you can't conflate ForGG's mech with the mech that eventually took out Life in the latter half of 2015. The latter was much slower/split map. At the same time it came during one of Life's demotivational periods. Now whether or not Life was demotivated and therefore lost or was unable to find a way to win against that patch and was thus demotivated is up in the air.