EPTOn August 31 2018 16:29 Charoisaur wrote:
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
True plays in NA WCS.
The gap has closed between foreigners and Korea - Page 6
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xelnaga_empire
627 Posts
True plays in NA WCS. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
Yah except he can't play in both NA WCS and GSL at the same time. Unlike Neeb, Scarlett, SpeCial etc. Also just to do that took a lot of time/money/paperwork. There's not much chance he'd have been able to do it without Psistorm's help. And given that none of the koreans minus a few have the support of a rich foreign team, the option that TRUE took isn't really viable. The system is one sided and foreigners get it better, especially when you consider most of them are lesser players than the koreans who they get it better than. You can argue the system works and is effective, but it certainly isn't fair. The fact blizzard try and make it out to be is very sad in my opinion. | ||
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FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
On August 31 2018 19:35 Fango wrote: Yah except he can't play in both NA WCS and GSL at the same time. Unlike Neeb, Scarlett, SpeCial etc. Also just to do that took a lot of time/money/paperwork. There's not much chance he'd have been able to do it without Psistorm's help. And none of the koreans minus a few have the support of a rich foreign team. So even the option that TRUE took isn't really viable. The system is one sided and foreigners get it better, especially when you consider most of them are lesser players than the koreans who they get it better than. You can argue the system works and is effective, but it certainly isn't fair. The fact blizzard try and make it out to be is very sad in my opinion. Ok I had a long post written up and then accidentally deleted it...I'm going to write it later today.. | ||
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On August 31 2018 19:37 FrkFrJss wrote: And if they get visas, they can. Nothing's really stopping them from doing it. Sure, the visa process is long and somewhat expensive, but if they are committed to living in NA/EU, they can do so. Being actually committed to living in NA/EU is very much different to flying to korea and staying in the foreigner house for a couple months. Why people seem to think they're the same is bizarre. And without the backing of a team willing to support them, I don't see how it's financially viable for any korean to move in the first place. | ||
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HomoDeus
Netherlands12 Posts
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
Thats just bullshit excuse 1) ForGG region lock rule, ForGG didn't have the right visas so he had to have his own rule, he was fully living in europe and it wasn't enough vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 2) TRUE cannot fully compete in Korea and abroad because there are some rules restricting this, e.g. you have to live abroad a month before the event. If you have a GSL group in that time, tough luck vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 3) TRUE's team had to pay huge amount of money for the process to get the visa vs Foreigners just live few months in Korea If you want to compare these two cases, maybe you can look at them at first!!! This is the biggest hypocricy I saw from The Pylon show | ||
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dummy1
420 Posts
Shame on you. On September 01 2018 00:39 deacon.frost wrote: Thats just bullshit excuse 1) ForGG region lock rule, ForGG didn't have the right visas so he had to have his own rule, he was fully living in europe and it wasn't enough vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 2) TRUE cannot fully compete in Korea and abroad because there are some rules restricting this, e.g. you have to live abroad a month before the event. If you have a GSL group in that time, tough luck vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 3) TRUE's team had to pay huge amount of money for the process to get the visa vs Foreigners just live few months in Korea If you want to compare these two cases, maybe you can look at them at first!!! This is the biggest hypocricy I saw from The Pylon show Indeed. Hypocrisy is about level 100. More like The Clown show. | ||
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StasisField
United States1086 Posts
On September 01 2018 00:39 deacon.frost wrote: Thats just bullshit excuse 1) ForGG region lock rule, ForGG didn't have the right visas so he had to have his own rule, he was fully living in europe and it wasn't enough vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 2) TRUE cannot fully compete in Korea and abroad because there are some rules restricting this, e.g. you have to live abroad a month before the event. If you have a GSL group in that time, tough luck vs Foreigners just live for few months in Korea 3) TRUE's team had to pay huge amount of money for the process to get the visa vs Foreigners just live few months in Korea If you want to compare these two cases, maybe you can look at them at first!!! This is the biggest hypocricy I saw from The Pylon show I do agree the system is unfair and puts Koreans at a disadvantage. My proposal is this: make it so you cannot participate in WCS events if you have not been knocked out of the current GSL season. That way, foreigners trying in GSL cannot "double dip", Koreans who get early exits in the GSL still have more opportunities for prize money, and the top Koreans don't come in an dominate the foreign scene for a weekend and take all the prize money. This also gives us more "foreigner vs korean" games to watch. This rule also only applies to a GSL season that is currently running, so finishing top 4 in the previous season of the GSL does not prevent someone like Maru from playing in a WCS event while he waits for the next one to start. I think this resolves most if not all problems the majority of people on both sides seem to have. If it has any glaring issues I'm overlooking, I'd love for y'all to point them out, but I presonally don't see any. | ||
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TheZergishOne
27 Posts
Hate to have to say this but I think it just comes down to money plain and simple. WCS events are under blizzards arm and earn money for blizzard, the Korean scene isn't. So the Korean scenes health isn't a priority for blizzard. They say they're boosting the foreign scene for more viewers but that's twitch viewers, Koreans watch on other platforms. | ||
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Xamo
Spain881 Posts
It happens exactly like in other sports that are dominated by one single country. For example, basketball has always been dominated by US players. To help the global scene, a region lock was set in place in the rest of the world, so that a maximum of 2 or 3 US players can play in each team outside the USA (it affects all non-national players, but the fact is that these 2-3 players are always from the USA). But any number of foreigners can play in an NBA team. Nobody calls this "racism", it is just the best for the global scene. And the gap is slowly closing between USA players and the rest of the world, with NBA teams incorporating more foreigners than ever, and global viewership and number of players rising. The lock is working! Moreover, one could argue that the price money distribution is really unfair in SC2, in favor of Koreans. Half the offline price money is devoted to Korean tournaments, to only ONE country in the world. Has this country one half of the viewership or one half the world's SC2 players? Does this country represent for Blizzard half of his income? Definitively not. There are measures in place to help even this: foreigners can compete in GSL, Blizzard sponsors a foreigner team house in Seoul, and koreans cannot play in other tournaments unless they have visas - basically they live outside Korea and cannot opt to its tournament money. The only adjustment that the system needs is to allow players like TRUE, who live most of the time outside Korea, to compete in GSL. The rest is ok. BTW, I watch Korean SC2 mostly, because I like to see the highest level of games I can find. But I recognize the need to promote the foreigner scene, or SC2 will not survive as an e-sport. In the long term, I believe a healthy global scene will bring more viewership, sponsors, etc. and more money also to Korea, where the best players compete. Exactly as it has happened with basketball and the NBA. | ||
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FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
1. Is the region lock working/did the region lock kill the Korean scene? 2. Is it unfair/how unfair is the region lock to the Korean scene. The first is undoubtedly that the region lock is working. One might argue that it's because the Koreans lost motivation and practice partners and thus became worse. However, as stated above, and you can verify it through liquipedia, the two regions, WCS and Korea, both receive around the same amount of money. So, money can't really be an issue for top Koreans. It is possible and likely that they are not as good as they once were or as they could be without the teamhouse, but the thing is, if we look back to 2015 or any year prior, there was almost no doubt that the best Korean could smack down the best foreigner with little trouble. Or even the not-quite-best Korean could destroy most other foreigners. Serral beating three of the top Koreans of three different races is something that has pretty much never happened before. Even with Stephano or Naniwa, neither of them beat three of the best Koreans of three different races in a row. It was usually either Zerg or Protoss that they were good against, and even then, top Koreans like Life still beat Naniwa. Mid-low Koreans being beaten by top foreigners was something that happened prior to the region lock, but we're seeing mid-foreigners holding their own against mid-Koreans, which is something that didn't often happen. Of course, we can argue the extent to which the gap has closed, but I think that it's hard to argue against the idea that foreigners and Koreans are closer in skill now than ever before. Again, we're talking about the best Koreans here, not like a Code A or washed up Korean. Motivation shouldn't be an issue for the best of the best. Form, of course, does change, but I'm pretty sure MVP even doing poorly would win against any foreigner back in his day. Part of the problem of the failing Korea system is due to their own making. The GSL in 2012 was very hard to get into and also fairly difficult to drop out of. Only the players who placed 4th in their ro32 groups played in the first round of Code A, but other than that, you had three more chances to get into Code S. Past 4th place, 3rd place, and the ro16 losers went into the 2nd and 3rd rounds of Code A, and if they lost in those rounds, they went into the up/down matches, and if they lose those, they went into Code A of the next season. Even when Code A became more streamlined, the top 8 would still qualify for Code S, and the rest would fall to Code A group stage. Whereas, although 2013/2014 WCS model was like GSL, in 2016-2018, we have regional challenger qualifiers, a lengthy challenger, and even then, people can sign up in the open bracket. We also have several online tournaments, where the top foreigners do not always (and sometimes are barred from) competing in. Just to name a few, there's the Proxy tournaments, the BTTV tournaments, and the OSC-related tournaments. But each of these sets of tournaments hold several different tournaments underneath them. In contrast, most online Korean tournaments are open to everyone, and there are also fewer (there are a bit more now, with ONPOONG, Afreeca, and BTSL Korea, Olimoleague, and Kung fu Cup) being open to Koreans. But the problem is that most of these tournaments have top Koreans, and there's few places where primarily newer Koreans compete. 2. The region lock is undoubtedly unfair in that foreigners and Koreans are treated differently. However, if the foreigners are treated differently, it's due to Afreeca rather than Blizzard. Afreeca wants foreigners to compete in the GSL, and they have bigger crowds as a result of having foreigners in the GSL. Just listen to the cheers Scarlett was getting against Classic. I dare say that Scarlett had even louder cheers than Classic. Foreigners are gaining fans in the GSL, and they are drawing more people. Instead of having half empty ro32 and ro16, those rounds are full or mostly full. But if Afreeca really didn't want foreigners, I do think it could pressure Blizzard into putting stricter rules on the tournament. Even if that were not the case, the imbalanced region lock is only bring foreigners (or trying to) closer to the level of Koreans. During the non-region locked days, we really didn't see foreigners get closer to Koreans. We have Stephano and Naniwa, but they were the only ones who could really challenge top Koreans. The rest just were not good enough, and we saw this in WCS NA, where on average, there would be like one foreigner in the ro8, and EU wasn't a whole ton better with 2-3 foreigners in the ro8. Koreans indiscriminately dominated tournaments and prize pools, and foreigners just were not able to compete with the infrastructure and system that Korea already had in place. For a fledgling esport, there need to be boundaries so that all regions can thrive and not just one. Look at Heroes. For the Blizzard leagues, there are region locked competitions for four major regions (NA, EU, China, Korea), and this ensures that one dominant region doesn't trample over everyone else. And this system was needed for SC2, because we saw the mass retirement of foreign players starting in 2012 (maybe even late 2011) because Koreans won almost everything. Had Blizzard not gone the region-locked route, the entire scene would have collapsed because foreigners make up the bulk of the players and audience of the SC2 region. Unlike BW, SC2 is not quite as popular in Korea, and so it can't really survive on its own. Or it would survive, but it would be on life support as the best Koreans retired for military service and few players replaced them. In implementing the region lock and regional challenger tournaments, Blizzard has helped foster a system that contributes to the raising up of other players. So until the region is sufficiently revitalized, I would say that the region lock is a necessary evil that levels the imbalance in playing field that was created before the region lock. People can say that they want either a totally locked or a totally unlocked system, but the problem with that is the Korean scene itself is saying that they disagree with you, or you are advocating for the eventual demise the entire SC2 esports scene. That might sound dramatic, and I think the scene can handle itself better now than in 2016, but let's do a thought experiment. Say the regions are completely unlocked. We have qualifiers, and in the ro16, we have 12 Koreans (made up of the ro16), and we have Neeb, Serral, and maybe Special and one other player. Maybe it's 10 Koreans, 6 foreigners. This is the same result tournament after tournament, because aside from Neeb and Serral, the other foreigners are a lot less consistent against the Koreans. Even Scarlett and Special are not entirely consistent, and the others like Elazer, Snute, uThermal, and Kelazhur aren't consistent against Koreans. The other foreigners gradually die off except for TLO and other mainstays, because they can't really make much money. The weaker Koreans gradually die off because they can compete with top foreigners or Koreans. With these results, the scene loses interest as it becomes more of the same with the occasional upset of a foreigner or Korean. Because I don't think you can really argue that the top Koreans won't generally win against the foreigners. | ||
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xelnaga_empire
627 Posts
On September 01 2018 05:06 FrkFrJss wrote: There's two main things being argued here: 1. Is the region lock working/did the region lock kill the Korean scene? 2. Is it unfair/how unfair is the region lock to the Korean scene. The first is undoubtedly that the region lock is working. One might argue that it's because the Koreans lost motivation and practice partners and thus became worse. However, as stated above, and you can verify it through liquipedia, the two regions, WCS and Korea, both receive around the same amount of money. So, money can't really be an issue for top Koreans. It is possible and likely that they are not as good as they once were or as they could be without the teamhouse, but the thing is, if we look back to 2015 or any year prior, there was almost no doubt that the best Korean could smack down the best foreigner with little trouble. Or even the not-quite-best Korean could destroy most other foreigners. Serral beating three of the top Koreans of three different races is something that has pretty much never happened before. Even with Stephano or Naniwa, neither of them beat three of the best Koreans of three different races in a row. It was usually either Zerg or Protoss that they were good against, and even then, top Koreans like Life still beat Naniwa. Mid-low Koreans being beaten by top foreigners was something that happened prior to the region lock, but we're seeing mid-foreigners holding their own against mid-Koreans, which is something that didn't often happen. Of course, we can argue the extent to which the gap has closed, but I think that it's hard to argue against the idea that foreigners and Koreans are closer in skill now than ever before. Again, we're talking about the best Koreans here, not like a Code A or washed up Korean. Motivation shouldn't be an issue for the best of the best. Form, of course, does change, but I'm pretty sure MVP even doing poorly would win against any foreigner back in his day. 2. The region lock is undoubtedly unfair in that foreigners and Koreans are treated differently. However, if the foreigners are treated differently, it's due to Afreeca rather than Blizzard. Afreeca wants foreigners to compete in the GSL, and they have bigger crowds as a result of having foreigners in the GSL. Just listen to the cheers Scarlett was getting against Classic. I dare say that Scarlett had even louder cheers than Classic. Foreigners are gaining fans in the GSL, and they are drawing more people. Instead of having half empty ro32 and ro16, those rounds are full or mostly full. But if Afreeca really didn't want foreigners, I do think it could pressure Blizzard into putting stricter rules on the tournament. Even if that were not the case, the imbalanced region lock is only bring foreigners (or trying to) closer to the level of Koreans. During the non-region locked days, we really didn't see foreigners get closer to Koreans. We have Stephano and Naniwa, but they w That's true. I see a lot of foreigners sitting in the seats during the GSL matches. Even inside Korea, foreign fans are helping the SC2 scene. GOMTV actually wanted more foreigners to play in the GSL before and they used to reserve 2 spots for foreigners in the GSL back in the old days. Foreigners were invited to play in those two Code S spots, If too many foreigners qualify for GSL, then it may become a problem. I think up to 8 foreigners should be able to qualify for the Round of 32. Even if 8 foreigners manage to qualify for the Round of 32, that's still 24 spots for other Koreans so it will still be healthy for Korean players. | ||
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DSK
England1110 Posts
On August 31 2018 07:07 dankobanana wrote: but thats not the cost. The korean scene is not loosing players because of WCS. Its loosing players because SC2 just isnt popular in Korea. Look at the viewership of any WCS event and GSL. WCS>>GSL. Even the WCS Challenger, an online tournament had more viewers than GSL. if you ask me, the region lock is a 100% success story. it gave the ability for foreign players to develop and earn a living wage because in general, people want to watch more foreigners. deal with it. because of region lock and f2p, sc2 is growing (everywhere but Korea) You speak a lot of truth, but I'd also say that not giving newer prospective players the capacity to go and get their foot in the door of the competitive scene that is dominated by established, KESPA era players makes it a difficult prospect also. Online tournaments do offer some outlets but :/. I'll be honest, I much prefer watching Korean tournies to WCS ones and I accept that I might just be in the minority. Maybe I'm just biased in my thinking *shrug*. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany16008 Posts
On August 31 2018 07:07 dankobanana wrote: but thats not the cost. The korean scene is not loosing players because of WCS. Its loosing players because SC2 just isnt popular in Korea. Look at the viewership of any WCS event and GSL. WCS>>GSL. Even the WCS Challenger, an online tournament had more viewers than GSL. if you ask me, the region lock is a 100% success story. it gave the ability for foreign players to develop and earn a living wage because in general, people want to watch more foreigners. deal with it. because of region lock and f2p, sc2 is growing (everywhere but Korea) Why are you being dishonest? Just look at the recent GSL qualifiers to see how the korean scene is losing players due to the WCS system. Or are you one of those guys pretending like there's 0 new blood in korea to fit the narrative that the one-sided regionlock isn't hurting anyone? | ||
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FrkFrJss
Canada1205 Posts
On September 01 2018 05:26 DSK wrote: You speak a lot of truth, but I'd also say that not giving newer prospective players the capacity to go and get their foot in the door of the competitive scene that is dominated by established, KESPA era players makes it a difficult prospect also. Online tournaments do offer some outlets but :/. I'll be honest, I much prefer watching Korean tournies to WCS ones and I accept that I might just be in the minority. Maybe I'm just biased in my thinking *shrug*. No, I think most people generally like watching Korean tournaments more. However, I think the difference is the extent to which they prefer one to the other. I like watching the best players play, but to me, it is quickly becoming apparent that the foreigners aren't as weak as they used to be. So watching foreigners isn't as different as watching Koreans. Plus, did you see that Rogue series against Neeb? If you covered up his name, I bet most people would think some weaker foreign Zerg. On September 01 2018 05:20 xelnaga_empire wrote: That's true. I see a lot of foreigners sitting in the seats during the GSL matches. Even inside Korea, foreign fans are helping the SC2 scene. GOMTV actually wanted more foreigners to play in the GSL before and they used to reserve 2 spots for foreigners in the GSL back in the old days. Foreigners were invited to play in those two Code S spots, If too many foreigners qualify for GSL, then it may become a problem. I think up to 8 foreigners should be able to qualify for the Round of 32. Even if 8 foreigners manage to qualify for the Round of 32, that's still 24 spots for other Koreans so it will still be healthy for Korean players. No, I agree that that if too many players qualify for GSL, it is a problem. I do think that WCS should be unlocked for the weaker Koreans but not for the mid or top Koreans, and we could implement a similar system for top foreigners if it becomes an issue in GSL. On September 01 2018 05:34 Charoisaur wrote: Why are you being dishonest? Just look at the recent GSL qualifiers to see how the korean scene is losing players due to the WCS system. Or are you one of those guys pretending like there's 0 new blood in korea to fit the narrative that the one-sided regionlock isn't hurting anyone. Very few new Koreans would qualify for the GSL had there been no foreigners. Also, that's more of an issue you need to take up with Afreeca, as they support allowing foreigners in GSL | ||
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Zzoram
Canada7115 Posts
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xelnaga_empire
627 Posts
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dummy1
420 Posts
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Yonnua
United Kingdom2331 Posts
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Lazare1969
United States318 Posts
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