I think the gap has closed a little between foreigners and Korea, especially Europe. Korea is still better than the rest of the world, this is undeniable. But the gap has closed a little.
I suspect since the collapse of ProLeague and the collapse of the KESPA teams (with Jin Air the only team left), the practice environment for Koreans is not as it once was during the ProLeague and KESPA days.
On the other hand, the WCS region lock has done wonders for the foreign scene. I suspect the foreign pros are getting more chances to get prize money from tournaments, and this is motivating them to practice harder. At the same time, in the Europe scene, there are new up and coming players like Reynor and Clem, adding to the competitive environment of the Europe scene. Conversely, I don't know of any young and upcoming Korean players.
In cross tournaments that involve Koreans and foreigners (especially European players), the foreigners are performing quite well against the Koreans. You have HSC where the Koreans lost to many European players at HSC, although the finalists were Soo and Innovation. Scarlett won IEM Pyeongchang, denying sOs in the finals, while Elazer denied Zest in the same tournament. Then Scarlett made it as far as the Round of 8 in the GSL, which hasn't been done by a foreigner since Naniwa I think. In this season's GSL, you have Neeb and Reynor making it to the Round of 16, and Special came close. And in online tournaments, you see the Koreans losing to foreigners every now and then (although Koreans tend to win more in online tournaments). And of course, there were some upsets by European players at GSL vs The World.
I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing if the gap is closing because the viewership has gone up for SC2 this year. If the closing gap between foreigners and Korea leads to more viewers, and therefore more sponsors and money injected into the SC2 scene, then all the better for the SC2 pro scene. So I am in favor of the region lock, for the overall health of professional SC2.
Edit: Serral had this to say about the EU server:
I think you can get pretty good with European practice, especially against Zergs and Protoss players. With the practice I’m getting against them, I can beat anyone. We’re lacking a bit in Terran players—we have some, uThermal and souL—but not too many. So I have been mainly just theorycrafting and thinking about how to play the game, ‘what are the correct things to do?’ and watching the Korean games.
This obsession with The Gap is suffocating. Are there good foreign players? Yes. Are there good Korean players? Yes. Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
Trying to shoehorn the average skills of foreigners and Koreans into a single quantity "The Gap" is really tiresome and draws attention away from meaningful questions and courses of action (precisely, what action is best for both the Korean and foreign scene, what will produce the highest levels of both spectatorship and play). I think these are questions that can be addressed without reference and deference to "The Gap."
Edit: I absolutely think Serral is competitive with the top Koreans, and Neeb's run was definitely not as impressive. I don't think any of the other foreigners are quite there yet. The proper course of action for such a dynamic, where Serral is rather unopposed in the foreign scene, is a very interesting question and a much more pertinent one than last year.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
Imho HSC ,Katowice and GSL vs the World team competition just showed how Koreans are still dominant in this game. If you remove Serral from the game, basically ro8 would still be all koreans without region lock
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
I would rather have a sustainable pro scene than Koreans stomping on everyone, leading to the death of the SC2 pro scene. Since ProLeague disbanded, the SC2 scene needs more money. More viewership will ultimately lead to more money for SC2 pros.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
Is it good to have tournaments that are decided before the event has started though? WCS events right now are basically just giving Serral a free trophy.
On August 05 2018 20:57 xelnaga_empire wrote: I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.
Well, wasn't Nestea like 30 years old when he won? I'm not sure age here means anything. It's more about if there are new players and incentive as you mention.
Do you think we'll reach a point when the Korean scene is mostly gone and StarCraft 2 turns into a game which is dominated by foreigners? In which case, they shouldn't be called foreigners anymore as it will be too archaic. :D
On August 05 2018 20:57 xelnaga_empire wrote: I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.
Well, wasn't Nestea like 30 years old when he won? I'm not sure age here means anything. It's more about if there are new players and incentive as you mention.
NesTea had his military service done before he started playing SC2. Age and therefore military service will ultimately retire many of the now top Koreans in the next few years.
On August 05 2018 20:57 xelnaga_empire wrote: I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.
Well, wasn't Nestea like 30 years old when he won? I'm not sure age here means anything. It's more about if there are new players and incentive as you mention.
Do you think we'll reach a point when the Korean scene is mostly gone and StarCraft 2 turns into a game which is dominated by foreigners? In which case, they shouldn't be called foreigners anymore as it will be too archaic. :D
Well, in BW the oldest player who ever won an OSL was Jangbi with 23 y as the older players usually got overtaken by younger ones. Right now the only players younger than that are Maru, Solar and Dark. Also INnoVation himself admitted that he feels his mechanics getting worse with increasing age. + Show Spoiler +
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
I would rather have a sustainable pro scene than Koreans stomping on everyone, leading to the death of the SC2 pro scene. Since ProLeague disbanded, the SC2 scene needs more money. More viewership will ultimately lead to more money for SC2 pros.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
Charoisaur, i dont think Stats is any weaker than 3 years ago, you overestimate the body factor and underestimate the lassitude that inevitably comes with time.
serral closed it, but serral is an anomaly. wouldnt be surprised if he is some kind of savant. for the rest, nothing has changed and they are worlds apart from the korean scene as usual.
On August 05 2018 21:18 sc-darkness wrote: Well, wasn't Nestea like 30 years old when he won? I'm not sure age here means anything. It's more about if there are new players and incentive as you mention.
This was the pre-KESPA era. After 2012 when KESPA joined, the skill ceiling for SC2 in Korea went up.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
This is misinformation and it hasn't played out like you said. From this Variety article:
“[Activision-Blizzard] made GSL clones around the world, and a bunch of Koreans were allowed to move to other regions, where they’d win easier tournaments,” remembers Plott. “We lost a lot of our star power, and the GSL clone tournaments never really picked up well because it was just a bunch of top Korean guys just bashing everyone.”
“There was one day [in the GSL studio] where just one guy came into watch. We’d gone from having a full studio to just one guy,” said Stemkoski.
You should read the rest of that Variety article. It talks about how the SC2 scene has improved. We've gone from the empty GSL studios mentioned in that article to a nice crowd now. GSL vs the World looked packed to me for all the days of the event. And even in the Round of 32 in the GSL this season, the audience was pretty good.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
This is misinformation and it hasn't played out like you said. From this Variety article:
“[Activision-Blizzard] made GSL clones around the world, and a bunch of Koreans were allowed to move to other regions, where they’d win easier tournaments,” remembers Plott. “We lost a lot of our star power, and the GSL clone tournaments never really picked up well because it was just a bunch of top Korean guys just bashing everyone.”
“There was one day [in the GSL studio] where just one guy came into watch. We’d gone from having a full studio to just one guy,” said Stemkoski.
You should read the rest of that Variety article. It talks about how the SC2 scene has improved. We've gone from the empty GSL studios mentioned in that article to a nice crowd now. GSL vs the World looked packed to me for all the days of the event. And even in the Round of 32 in the GSL this season, the audience was pretty good.
We'll talk again in 2 years when most of the current korean pros are in military.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
This is misinformation and it hasn't played out like you said. From this Variety article:
“[Activision-Blizzard] made GSL clones around the world, and a bunch of Koreans were allowed to move to other regions, where they’d win easier tournaments,” remembers Plott. “We lost a lot of our star power, and the GSL clone tournaments never really picked up well because it was just a bunch of top Korean guys just bashing everyone.”
“There was one day [in the GSL studio] where just one guy came into watch. We’d gone from having a full studio to just one guy,” said Stemkoski.
You should read the rest of that Variety article. It talks about how the SC2 scene has improved. We've gone from the empty GSL studios mentioned in that article to a nice crowd now. GSL vs the World looked packed to me for all the days of the event. And even in the Round of 32 in the GSL this season, the audience was pretty good.
We'll talk again in 2 years when most of the current korean pros are in military.
On August 05 2018 20:57 xelnaga_empire wrote: I think the gap has closed a little between foreigners and Korea, especially Europe. Korea is still better than the rest of the world, this is undeniable. But the gap has closed a little.
I suspect since the collapse of ProLeague and the collapse of the KESPA teams (with Jin Air the only team left), the practice environment for Koreans is not as it once was during the ProLeague and KESPA days.
On the other hand, the WCS region lock has done wonders for the foreign scene. I suspect the foreign pros are getting more chances to get prize money from tournaments, and this is motivating them to practice harder. At the same time, in the Europe scene, there are new up and coming players like Reynor and Clem, adding to the competitive environment of the Europe scene. Conversely, I don't know of any young and upcoming Korean players.
In cross tournaments that involve Koreans and foreigners (especially European players), the foreigners are performing quite well against the Koreans. You have HSC where the Koreans lost to many European players at HSC, although the finalists were Soo and Innovation. Scarlett won IEM Pyeongchang, denying sOs in the finals, while Elazer denied Zest in the same tournament. Then Scarlett made it as far as the Round of 8 in the GSL, which hasn't been done by a foreigner since Naniwa I think. In this season's GSL, you have Neeb and Reynor making it to the Round of 16, and Special came close. And in online tournaments, you see the Koreans losing to foreigners every now and then (although Koreans tend to win more in online tournaments). And of course, there were some upsets by European players at GSL vs The World.
I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing if the gap is closing because the viewership has gone up for SC2 this year. If the closing gap between foreigners and Korea leads to more viewers, and therefore more sponsors and money injected into the SC2 scene, then all the better for the SC2 pro scene. So I am in favor of the region lock, for the overall health of professional SC2.
You have to stop saying Scarlett. Everything she did to win those games was patched out shortly after. You have neeb losing 3:0. You have HSC with bracket luck for foreigner. IEMXII. Good job cherry picking. "I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. ". Top notch clairvoyance
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
I would rather have a sustainable pro scene than Koreans stomping on everyone, leading to the death of the SC2 pro scene. Since ProLeague disbanded, the SC2 scene needs more money. More viewership will ultimately lead to more money for SC2 pros.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
Yep, exactly this.
It is very naive to believe that viewership will continue to grow when the number and skill of top players (i.e. Koreans) will diminish.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
I would rather have a sustainable pro scene than Koreans stomping on everyone, leading to the death of the SC2 pro scene. Since ProLeague disbanded, the SC2 scene needs more money. More viewership will ultimately lead to more money for SC2 pros.
Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.
Yep, exactly this.
It is very naive to believe that viewership will continue to grow when the number and skill of top players (i.e. Koreans) will diminish.
And the Korean scene has always been a big part of Starcraft, so much of the games culture and scene was built around the Korean scene from the past
There has been no real new blood in Korea since Speed and that was like 2 years ago. Outside of the current top pro players, I'm guessing everyone involved in SC in Korea is simply hoping to coast along for the next 2 years until StarCraft 3 is released and some new blood enters the scene. There's no way Blizzard can hold off SC3 for longer than a couple of years - the GSL will just become a no stakes exhibition league for veterans like the ASL.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
Unless korean pros are competing overseas, I very much doubt they'll get sponsors form decent orgs. Even average-good foreigners can get sponsors over koreans that are much better than them because of their exposure to western audiences. TY and Stats being on splyce seem like the only exceptions.
Even though I root for Korean players usually, I have to admit the gap has closed. This year, the foreigners have won 2 global tournaments, made GSL ro4, GSL ro8 and a few GSL ro16. While I think it's unlikely they will have the same degree of success next year, I think it's hard to deny that the gap has closed. That said, the narrative that the gap has been closing every year is something I consider untrue. The gap closed a lot in 2016, but then it probably widened a lot in 2017 and now it has closed significantly again.
On August 29 2018 20:18 Anc13nt wrote: Even though I root for Korean players usually, I have to admit the gap has closed. This year, the foreigners have won 2 global tournaments, made GSL ro4, GSL ro8 and a few GSL ro16. While I think it's unlikely they will have the same degree of success next year, I think it's hard to deny that the gap has closed. That said, the narrative that the gap has been closing every year is something I consider untrue. The gap closed a lot in 2016, but then it probably widened a lot in 2017 and now it has closed significantly again.
Well, Elazer eliminated Dark in 2017, Special topped his group against TY and Stats, and Neeb was the only one to take a series against the eventual Blizzcon winner. Neeb beat sOs 3-0, Showtime almost won against soO, Neeb was very close against TY in 2-3, and Special was very close against Stats 2-3. Serral topped his group in IEM Katowice. Yes, foreigners as a whole were not as successful, but they had a lot of close series against top players.
Yeah, to be fair, even though the foreigner results were kind of disappointing in 2017, there were a lot of close series and if the foreigners were able to clutch some of them, 2017 might also have been a good year for the foreigners.
On August 29 2018 20:29 Anc13nt wrote: Yeah, to be fair, even though the foreigner results were kind of disappointing in 2017, there were a lot of close series and if the foreigners were able to clutch some of them, 2017 might also have been a good year for the foreigners.
I do agree that there was a lot of disappointment with foreigners in 2017. I do think the gap closed some, but I think people were expecting it to have closed more. Neeb especially, I think, disappointed in 2017 against Koreans.
On August 05 2018 21:03 yubo56 wrote: Would mixing the two be good for the foreign scene just yet? Probably not for anybody not named Serral.
I don't think it's a good idea to remove region lock. Let the foreigners that want to, compete in the GSL. If one day, foreigners are on par with Korea, then remove the region lock. Until then, the region lock should remain because it is helping the SC2 scene recover.
It's helping the non-Korean scene. It's not helping the Korean scene at all that the region-lock is only in one direction though.
That's unfortunate for the Korean scene. But SC2 viewership numbers are on the rise. This means more sponsors, potentially more tournaments with better prize pools, and ultimately, more money for SC2 pros around the world. It may even lead to some of the Korean pros getting sponsors. I just saw that Classic got a sponsor. And don't forget that Innovation got sponsored by OGaming TV.
Unless korean pros are competing overseas, I very much doubt they'll get sponsors form decent orgs. Even average-good foreigners can get sponsors over koreans that are much better than them because of their exposure to western audiences. TY and Stats being on splyce seem like the only exceptions.
This. SC2 scene had more sponsors back then, sponsors were flying koreans all over the place to represent them. Now most of the pros retired, because there isn't enough money from sponsors In Korea to sustain them, but that is just one of the problem. In the end Instead of watching the best players, now we are watching whats left of them and other representatives from around the globe.
I honestly do not see something has changed since LoTV was released except Serral and Neeb.
Foreigner beating Korean in a series.. That's what actually happened a lot since WoL and HoTS. They just did not have any wins in a tournament vs top Koreans when the game was developed enough and much harder to play in pro level since HoTS. However, Serral and Neeb were able to accomplish that.
And also, Neeb dominated WCS Circuit in 2017, and now Serral is dominating in 2018. By looking at this results, other foreigners simply struggled to stop these two at their primes.
I don't think blizzard will unlock region lock just because Serral won gsl vs world and Neeb won kespa cup and went ro4 in gsl code s. They might don't wanna see 14 Koreans and 2 foreigners in next year blizzcon.
On August 05 2018 22:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Absolutely not... The gap between Serral and the other foreigners has simply widened.
No. The gap between foreigner Zerg and Protoss has closed with Korea. Only foreigner Terran remain significantly behind Korean Terran.
Nope. Neeb and ShowTime are pretty good and are legit top-tier in at least one MU but overall I don't put them on the level of Zest, Stats, sOs, Classic, Trap, or herO. The rest of the foreign tosses are even further behind.
Korean Zergs vs Foreigners is the thinnest largely because most of the good Korean Zergs have left the game (about to lose another one if Leenock is serious about retiring). Even then, I'd only rank Serral and Scarlett up there with Rogue, soO, Dark, Solar and the recent Leenock.
On August 05 2018 22:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Absolutely not... The gap between Serral and the other foreigners has simply widened.
The gap between serral and neeb may be wide when viewed as a snapshot depending on the players going through hot or cold periods but lifetime achievements are still neck and neck. Gap between those two is narrow to non-existent.
You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
Thats 100% true. It also FEELS more shitty to be a fan of Korean pros. Blizzard achieved its goal for sure. It's just a matter of opinion if that was the right goal to have.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
Thats 100% true. It also FEELS more shitty to be a fan of Korean pros. Blizzard achieved its goal for sure. It's just a matter of opinion if that was the right goal to have.
It's nice to have a thriving Korean scene. But is it worth it to have a thriving Korean scene if overall SC2 viewership suffers?
I would rather have higher overall viewership numbers for SC2 even if it means the Korean SC2 scene takes a bit of a hit. While BW and SC2 are heavily based in Korea, I don't think the future of SC2 has to be. Aside from LoL, BW, and SC2, look at the other games that are doing quite well and don't depend on a single country like Korea.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
Thats 100% true. It also FEELS more shitty to be a fan of Korean pros. Blizzard achieved its goal for sure. It's just a matter of opinion if that was the right goal to have.
It's nice to have a thriving Korean scene. But is it worth it to have a thriving Korean scene if overall SC2 viewership suffers?
I would rather have higher overall viewership numbers for SC2 even if it means the Korean SC2 scene takes a bit of a hit. While BW and SC2 are heavily based in Korea, I don't think the future of SC2 has to be. Aside from LoL, BW, and SC2, look at the other games that are doing quite well and don't depend on a single country like Korea.
Then blizzard should have advanced the skill level of foreigners instead of retarding the skill of Koreans.
Did blizzard open and sponsor european, na, or sa team houses? Did they sponsor a Korean team house for foreigners? Did the promote the movement of foreigners to Korea for practice? No, No they didn't.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
Thats 100% true. It also FEELS more shitty to be a fan of Korean pros. Blizzard achieved its goal for sure. It's just a matter of opinion if that was the right goal to have.
It's nice to have a thriving Korean scene. But is it worth it to have a thriving Korean scene if overall SC2 viewership suffers?
I would rather have higher overall viewership numbers for SC2 even if it means the Korean SC2 scene takes a bit of a hit. While BW and SC2 are heavily based in Korea, I don't think the future of SC2 has to be. Aside from LoL, BW, and SC2, look at the other games that are doing quite well and don't depend on a single country like Korea.
Well, to some people twitch viewership seems to be the most important thing so they can jerk themselves of to how popular the game they follow is. Others just want a fair competitive scene that gets watched by the people who enjoy it.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
Thats 100% true. It also FEELS more shitty to be a fan of Korean pros. Blizzard achieved its goal for sure. It's just a matter of opinion if that was the right goal to have.
It's nice to have a thriving Korean scene. But is it worth it to have a thriving Korean scene if overall SC2 viewership suffers?
I would rather have higher overall viewership numbers for SC2 even if it means the Korean SC2 scene takes a bit of a hit. While BW and SC2 are heavily based in Korea, I don't think the future of SC2 has to be. Aside from LoL, BW, and SC2, look at the other games that are doing quite well and don't depend on a single country like Korea.
Then blizzard should have advanced the skill level of foreigners instead of retarding the skill of Koreans.
Did blizzard open and sponsor european, na, or sa team houses? Did they sponsor a Korean team house for foreigners? Did the promote the movement of foreigners to Korea for practice? No, No they didn't.
Blizzard didn't make the Koreans play worse, Blizzard didn't cause the multiple scandals that drove long time sponsors away from the Korean scene, and Blizzard didn't decide to terminate long standing Korean leagues either. The Korean scene did that all on its own.
You seem to think the Korean scene was just thriving before the region lock went out, like over night it went from a booming amateur scene with an incredibly boisterous pro scene to what it is today all because Blizzard region locked the game. But the reality is the Korean scene in SC2 has been stagnating at best for most of its lifespan. This kind of crumbling was inevitable, and you don't have to look too hard to see it: paying people to sit in and cheer for players, almost no "new" faces since the switch from BW to SC2, shrinking audiences across the board, the matchfixing scandals, etc. Korea might have the best players, but it doesn't have the best market, the most money, or all that many top players(or even rising players) outside of the ones we already know. Korean brands don't want to market themselves where they won't get many engaged eyeballs and where they don't see potential for growth, and foreign brands don't want to market in regions where their brand won't be recognized by many no matter how big the viewership. The Korean market was unsustainable for years and its collapse just kept getting pushed back year after year until the companies involved just couldn't justify the losses anymore. The Korean market not enjoying SC2 as much as rival games and the several credibilty-destroying scandals created this problem, not Blizzard.
Also, 2 of your 3 questions still rely on one country to be the catalyst of success, and any global market/competition/etc cannot reliably depend on ONE country and expect long term success. Also, why should Blizzard sponsor team houses? Why should they try and flood the Korean scene with foreign players? Blizzard is under no obligation to support a team or organization that can't sustain itself. If a team can't support its own house, then it shouldn't have one and they need to find an alternative method to practice as a team and live within their means.
Your alternatives you gave as questions are unrealistic and the blame you put on Blizzard is unfounded. They didn't make Koreans worse, the stagnation of the Korean scene well before the region lock made a decline in their skill inevitable, as it was just a matter of time before the famed Korean infrastructure and dedicated training crumbled to pieces. If you want to blame anyone for the downfall of the Korean scene, which I still think would be too simplistic for such a complex issue, blame the Korean market for not liking SC2.
It's time to take off the region lock. The Korean scene has suffocated as a result of it, and if foreigners start taking a bunch of GSL spots then it is going to completely die soon. Brood War is far more popular in Korea - we have to do something to encourage Korean players to focus on SC2 isntead of Brood War, and I say that as someone who loves BW.
To the guy above me: the scandals aren't why all of the fans' favorite players no longer play SC2.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
That's right - nowadays, if you were to watch a WCS event or other foreign tournament, it doesn't feel like watching a minor league anymore, when you know that players like Serral and Neeb are top players.
Back during peak Korean dominance, if you couldn't get a few Koreans, there was little interest in a tournament made up of just foreigners.
It's all about perception, and now the perception is shifting towards NA / EU not having an inferior product to KR
Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
On August 30 2018 02:43 Rodya wrote: It's time to take off the region lock. The Korean scene has suffocated as a result of it, and if foreigners start taking a bunch of GSL spots then it is going to completely die soon. Brood War is far more popular in Korea - we have to do something to encourage Korean players to focus on SC2 isntead of Brood War, and I say that as someone who loves BW.
To the guy above me: the scandals aren't why all of the fans' favorite players no longer play SC2.
I didn't say the scandals are why the players stopped playing, I said they were contributing factors as to why the Korean scene didn't see growth and eventually started falling apart. Re-read what I said.
EDIT: Added the "falling apart" bit for better accuracy
How can you be a fan of anything right now. The whole system is so wrong and borderline racist. Every Korean is automatically a Innovation. The amount of Dark vs Innovation vs soO is just insane. Zero room to breath. Every online tournament right now is basically GSL. All that shit is also gonna taint every success by foreigner. Cant take it serious
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
There is new blood but we don't see them because they have to compete for the remaining Code S spots with ~10 foreign pros.
On August 30 2018 03:02 Tappo wrote: How can you be a fan of anything right now. The whole system is so wrong and borderline racist. Every Korean is automatically a Innovation. The amount of Dark vs Innovation vs soO is just insane. Zero room to breath. Every online tournament right now is basically GSL
That is a problem with the scene is not growing anymore and starting to die. Pretty much the same group of players (which is getting smaller and smaller) are playing vs each others all day long. It is just boring. Blizzard just won't get rid of region-lock. You either make money winning GSL or you are just winning $100 bucks here and there from online tournaments. Those options along already make you don't want to ever touch SC2 in Korea.
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
There is new blood but we don't see them because they have to compete for the remaining Code S spots with ~10 foreign pros.
Yeah, and the biggest public figures of SC2(yes, I mean ARtosis and Incontroln) are defending free Korea, region locked the rest ... because we have now the bestest everest games evah!!!@!@!!
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
That's right - nowadays, if you were to watch a WCS event or other foreign tournament, it doesn't feel like watching a minor league anymore, when you know that players like Serral and Neeb are top players.
Back during peak Korean dominance, if you couldn't get a few Koreans, there was little interest in a tournament made up of just foreigners.
It's all about perception, and now the perception is shifting towards NA / EU not having an inferior product to KR
The problem is that the product is now homogenized, and its a shitty one, the level of play has been on a consistent decline, almost to a point where a diehard fan just doesn't feel like watching it anymore.
I don't have strongly-held opinions about region lock but given how cutthroat the Korean scene is right now, I think WCS circuit should've had something like 7 spots and KR 9 spots. I think even foreign fans would've wanted to see sOs in Blizzcon last year, and Classic the year before.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
That's right - nowadays, if you were to watch a WCS event or other foreign tournament, it doesn't feel like watching a minor league anymore, when you know that players like Serral and Neeb are top players.
Back during peak Korean dominance, if you couldn't get a few Koreans, there was little interest in a tournament made up of just foreigners.
It's all about perception, and now the perception is shifting towards NA / EU not having an inferior product to KR
The problem is that the product is now homogenized, and its a shitty one, the level of play has been on a consistent decline, almost to a point where a diehard fan just doesn't feel like watching it anymore.
Huh? The skill level is higher than ever. All players are constantly improving.
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
There is new blood but we don't see them because they have to compete for the remaining Code S spots with ~10 foreign pros.
You are so biased it's actually incredible. Because yes there are 10 foreigners that are qualifying each Code S, and there was a lot of new blood coming before the foreigner/Noregret teamhouse took place. /s
There are enough Korean mid-tier players to ensure there's no new blood in the competition. That won't change. What korea could use for example, aside people magically wanting to play Sc2 instead of BW, is
- Prizepools redistributed towards lower places instead of rewarding only the top tier achievers. That GSL top tier distribution of prizepool has to stop. 36k for 1st and 14k for 2nd is absurd and dumb. You could make miracles by taking a slight bit of it and redistribute it more towards lower rank and give a reason for people to tryhard. Same can be said for blizzcon or even WCS tournaments.
- This same money could otherwise be used to finance a lower league, that would only be accessible to people not qualifying to Ro32 of GSL. And of course this lower league would have earnings that are lower than what you get by qualifying for Ro32 code S, but that would still motivate a lot more people to play, and not be negative for people qualifying for Code S.
It's really desillusional to think that someone could suddenly begin to play starcraft 2, and in a matter of months or in 1 year being Ro32 lvl player. That's stupid and that won't happen today when the competition is so stack (and yes the skill level of korea is stacked af). And don't forget that BW and Sc2 are in direct competition in Korea.
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
There is new blood but we don't see them because they have to compete for the remaining Code S spots with ~10 foreign pros.
You are so biased it's actually incredible. Because yes there are 10 foreigners that are qualifying each Code S, and there was a lot of new blood coming before the foreigner/Noregret teamhouse took place. /s
There are enough Korean mid-tier players to ensure there's no new blood in the competition. That won't change. What korea could use for example, aside people magically wanting to play Sc2 instead of BW, is
- Prizepools redistributed towards lower places instead of rewarding only the top tier achievers. That GSL top tier distribution of prizepool has to stop. 36k for 1st and 14k for 2nd is absurd and dumb. You could make miracles by taking a slight bit of it and redistribute it more towards lower rank and give a reason for people to tryhard. Same can be said for blizzcon or even WCS tournaments.
- This same money could otherwise be used to finance a lower league, that would only be accessible to people not qualifying to Ro32 of GSL. And of course this lower league would have earnings that are lower than what you get by qualifying for Ro32 code S, but that would still motivate a lot more people to play, and not be negative for people qualifying for Code S.
It's really desillusional to think that someone could suddenly begin to play starcraft 2, and in a matter of months or in 1 year being Ro32 lvl player. That's stupid and that won't happen today when the competition is so stack (and yes the skill level of korea is stacked af). And don't forget that BW and Sc2 are in direct competition in Korea.
He didn't write there are 10 foreigners in the GSL ro32, he said they are in the qualifications
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: Gap closing or not I feel Korean scene is just falling apart (IMO dying). Zero new bloods and several old faces are on the way out to military service. They can't even fill Ro32 of GSL anymore. Pretty much same faces every single tournament. Many of them seem to have a hard time this year (some already retired). Maru is god and all but he seems to benefit so much from such a weak battlefield. I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN. Maru vs Zest GSL final is the worst final in years. The Stats/TY/sOs group was nothing but a battle of cheeses.
There is new blood but we don't see them because they have to compete for the remaining Code S spots with ~10 foreign pros.
You are so biased it's actually incredible. Because yes there are 10 foreigners that are qualifying each Code S, and there was a lot of new blood coming before the foreigner/Noregret teamhouse took place. /s
There are enough Korean mid-tier players to ensure there's no new blood in the competition. That won't change. What korea could use for example, aside people magically wanting to play Sc2 instead of BW, is
- Prizepools redistributed towards lower places instead of rewarding only the top tier achievers. That GSL top tier distribution of prizepool has to stop. 36k for 1st and 14k for 2nd is absurd and dumb. You could make miracles by taking a slight bit of it and redistribute it more towards lower rank and give a reason for people to tryhard. Same can be said for blizzcon or even WCS tournaments.
- This same money could otherwise be used to finance a lower league, that would only be accessible to people not qualifying to Ro32 of GSL. And of course this lower league would have earnings that are lower than what you get by qualifying for Ro32 code S, but that would still motivate a lot more people to play, and not be negative for people qualifying for Code S.
It's really desillusional to think that someone could suddenly begin to play starcraft 2, and in a matter of months or in 1 year being Ro32 lvl player. That's stupid and that won't happen today when the competition is so stack (and yes the skill level of korea is stacked af). And don't forget that BW and Sc2 are in direct competition in Korea.
What has that to do with bias? It's just the truth. If you don't believe me then just take a look at the recent gsl qualifiers. There is new blood and with the decreasing number of korean pros they would have a shot at qualifying if it weren't for the foreign pros who take all the remaining spots.
Because yes there are 10 foreigners that are qualifying each Code S, and there was a lot of new blood coming before the foreigner/Noregret teamhouse took place.
I mean, yes. In the first GSL 2017 DRGling and Nightmare qualified and since then there have been more retirements so even more newcomers would have a shot at qualifying.
But to fit the narrative that the one-sided regionlock isn't hurting anyone I guess it's just better to close the eyes and pretend like there's 0 newcomers in korea.
I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies - have fun with your dead game after Maru and Innovation move to BW. The arrogance is astounding - I'm never going to watch a WCS event (other than Blizzcon), and that will never change.
BW is back, and real RTS fans always have a place to go if SC2 goes down the drain.
maru and innovation will never move to BW and i can't see you joking about that either. if the rest of your opinions follow that line of logic then you can continue to miss out the great WCS events you could have been watching because they're very much enjoyable each time.
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN.
You can't be serious right? Maru proxy raxes everyone, regardless of how good they are. Out of his 10 games in gsl this season, i think 7 or 8 have been proxies. Just because he does it doesn't mean he needs to.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
I definitely think the gap has closed a lot, it's just a weird position now since the scene really isn't that big any more. I think it might be best to just have it totally open at this point. GSL and WCS can still run similarly, but anyone can play anywhere. I don't think tons of Koreans are going to fly across the globe for a small shot at winning. Maybe the top 8 koreans?
Not only the gap has closed, but in case of European vs Korean Zergs it exceeded Koreans. Esoecially after this season of Code S, I feel like foreign Zergs understand the meta much better. Serral is the main proof, but the rest of Foreing Zergs still look much better than soO, Dark or Rogue. In Rogue vs Neeb series at GSL, Rogue, who's supposed to be the best Zerg in Korea just looked clueless. Sad but true.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
That's right - nowadays, if you were to watch a WCS event or other foreign tournament, it doesn't feel like watching a minor league anymore, when you know that players like Serral and Neeb are top players.
Back during peak Korean dominance, if you couldn't get a few Koreans, there was little interest in a tournament made up of just foreigners.
It's all about perception, and now the perception is shifting towards NA / EU not having an inferior product to KR
The problem is that the product is now homogenized, and its a shitty one, the level of play has been on a consistent decline, almost to a point where a diehard fan just doesn't feel like watching it anymore.
Huh? The skill level is higher than ever. All players are constantly improving.
For foreigners? Sure, I can see that perspective. I feel like we're even seeing a bit of an established hierarchy where it's easier than ever to pinpoint the top players of their respective races with Serral and Neeb having an arguably even higher peak than Stephano.
Korea though? Absolutely not, it's almost inarguable if you ask me. Players are not constantly improving. For instance, Bogus has yet to go on his usual rampage this year and soO is now going out in the ro32 to the likes of Keen (only made one ro8 in his career) and Special (who he destroyed at Blizzcon). Every year of HotS was far more competitive than this; Ryung making a GSL semis in HotS would've been unheard of (who hadn't had any notable results since 2012). I'd even go as far to say that from q3 2011 onward, pre-Kespa WoL was more cutthroat than what we have now.
On August 30 2018 01:25 Waxangel wrote: You could come up with all sorts of statistical evidence to prove the gap has closed or not.
But for the purposes of most StarCraft II viewers, it just doesn't FEEL as shitty to be a fan of foreign pros anymore, which is what really matters at the end of the day.
That's right - nowadays, if you were to watch a WCS event or other foreign tournament, it doesn't feel like watching a minor league anymore, when you know that players like Serral and Neeb are top players.
Back during peak Korean dominance, if you couldn't get a few Koreans, there was little interest in a tournament made up of just foreigners.
It's all about perception, and now the perception is shifting towards NA / EU not having an inferior product to KR
The problem is that the product is now homogenized, and its a shitty one, the level of play has been on a consistent decline, almost to a point where a diehard fan just doesn't feel like watching it anymore.
Huh? The skill level is higher than ever. All players are constantly improving.
For foreigners? Sure, I can see that perspective. I feel like we're even seeing a bit of an established hierarchy where it's easier than ever to pinpoint the top players of their respective races with Serral and Neeb having an arguably even higher peak than Stephano.
Korea though? Absolutely not, it's almost inarguable if you ask me. Players are not constantly improving. For instance, Bogus has yet to go on his usual rampage this year and soO is now going out in the ro32 to the likes of Keen (only made one ro8 in his career) and Special (who he destroyed at Blizzcon). Every year of HotS was far more competitive than this; Ryung making a GSL semis in HotS would've been unheard of (who hadn't had any notable results since 2012). I'd even go as far to say that from q3 2011 onward, pre-Kespa WoL was more cutthroat than what we have now.
Sorry, I forgot the /s. I was making fun of the crowd around Artosis who always repeat this "highest skilled era" thing.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
This so much. It is much more fun to watch now when the best foreigners can actually compete against the best koreans.
SC2 is actually in a better state than it has been for several years: 1. The number of players have not been this high for several years thanks to free to play. 2. The number of viewers is increasing due to free to play and better foreigner players. 3. The game is balanced and the meta is in a good place.
A sport being dominated by a single country is never healthy. It is like current situation where Norway is dominating cross-country skiing completely (like talking 80+% of the medals every time). The only result is that the rest of world completely lose interest in the sport.
SC2 declining in Korea but increasing in the rest of the World is good for the game.
You don't know for a fact that better foreign players lead to more viewers. WCS tournaments get more viewers because of the timezones. In global tournaments you don't see a dropoff in viewers once only koreans are left. When koreans where flooding WCS EU and NA the viewership was much higher than now. Not saying good foreigners don't lead to more viewers but it's just speculation. We have no data that suggests this is true.
A sport being dominated by a single country is never healthy.
If the goal were prioritizing views over all else, it is not entirely obvious that focusing on the development of the foreign scene (especially at the cost of the Korean scene) would be a great idea. One may well argue that instead, Blizzard should mainly focus on expanding SC2 in China, as the viewership numbers are really high and there is, thus a lot of potential in the Chinese scene. I'm pretty sure most people here would not accept or at the very least, like this proposition.
Personally, I think that the Korean scene may be small but it is also particularly valuable.The Korean scene has been such an important part of the history, perception and competition of SC2 that I think ignoring its decline could risk dire, unintended consequences. For example, if the scene were to keep declining, the Korean vs Foreigner narrative would eventually no longer exist. No doubt, this would be disastrous, as this story provides a significant motivation for many (if not most) viewers to continue to watch SC2. Consequently, I think for the sake of the viewers, both scenes deserve support and in particular, we should try to halt the decline of the Korean scene.
That being said, I can't help feeling that the outlook for the Korean scene will be bad even if Blizzard more actively assists the scene, as many Korean pros will retire within a few years.
A sport being dominated by a single country is never healthy.
LoL is being dominated by koreans too.
Most sports are dominated by one country. Or at least a lot of them are. It doesn't have anything to do with health, the only thing that does is popularity.
On August 30 2018 16:44 Charoisaur wrote: You don't know for a fact that better foreign players lead to more viewers. WCS tournaments get more viewers because of the timezones.
GSL vs the World got twice the viewers as it did last year. The time zone was the same as last year.
On August 30 2018 16:44 Charoisaur wrote: You don't know for a fact that better foreign players lead to more viewers. WCS tournaments get more viewers because of the timezones.
GSL vs the World got twice the viewers as it did last year. The time zone was the same as last year.
And 2013 WCS Europe used to get peaks of over 100k viewers despite being dominated by a handful of Koreans every time.
This is incorrect. The gap between foreigners and Koreans has not closed. The gap between the 'fantastic foreigner four' (Neeb, Reynor, Scarlett and Serral) has closed, but that is it.
Overall still, Korean talent is 10 x deeper than the talent in the foreigner scene.
Removing region lock would only end up in having at least 10 Koreans in top 16 of every tournament, and mostly the same top foreigners making money. Meaning the others would lose interest.
Best would be to fully lock, even Korean zone. One player is only allowed one of the two circuit, WCS or GSL. It's the only way new players can succeed in Korea, and still the only way to maintain the EU and NA developing.
Maybe having a lot more cross region tournament would be great like in the beginning of WCS, where there was a global tournament each time
On August 30 2018 16:44 Charoisaur wrote: You don't know for a fact that better foreign players lead to more viewers. WCS tournaments get more viewers because of the timezones.
GSL vs the World got twice the viewers as it did last year. The time zone was the same as last year.
And can you prove this is because foreigners are more competitive and not because of the overall growth following f2p?
On August 30 2018 13:59 hiroshOne wrote: Not only the gap has closed, but in case of European vs Korean Zergs it exceeded Koreans. Esoecially after this season of Code S, I feel like foreign Zergs understand the meta much better. Serral is the main proof, but the rest of Foreing Zergs still look much better than soO, Dark or Rogue. In Rogue vs Neeb series at GSL, Rogue, who's supposed to be the best Zerg in Korea just looked clueless. Sad but true.
um not really. Besides Serral, the korean zergs are still better. you took that 1 series of rogues vs neeb, did you see neeb vs dark at gsl vs the world?
On August 30 2018 16:44 Charoisaur wrote: You don't know for a fact that better foreign players lead to more viewers. WCS tournaments get more viewers because of the timezones.
GSL vs the World got twice the viewers as it did last year. The time zone was the same as last year.
And can you prove this is because foreigners are more competitive and not because of the overall growth following f2p?
It's not one or the other, both things influence the popularity of the game and both most likely in a positive way.
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN.
You can't be serious right? Maru proxy raxes everyone, regardless of how good they are. Out of his 10 games in gsl this season, i think 7 or 8 have been proxies. Just because he does it doesn't mean he needs to.
I said that because the first series between them were 2 standard macro games and Maru lost 0-2 to KeeN. In decider match, he proxied twice in a row (same type of proxy too) and won 2-0 within like 10 minutes. Of course, Maru cheeses but the fact he was not confident to go toe to toe with KeeN in standard games is disappointing to me as a viewer especially in the past Maru was not cheesing as much as he does these days. Hey, does whatever it takes to win. I don't blame him for doing it.
On August 31 2018 04:07 TheZergishOne wrote: Region lock is slowly strangling the Korean scene and is horrible for SC2 overall.
I disagree.
Every scene EXCEPT for korea is negatively affected when there is no region lock. Koreans just kept taking all the prize money leaving little incentive for local scenes to continue. A long time ago Catz had brought up the subject. I didn't quite understand it then but after reflecting on the last several years of the non-korean scene's development, I feel like he was 100% spot on.
Only one scene is affected by region lock and that is korea. It just means they don't get access to easy money anymore, poor them, right?
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there. In a way, I look at it the same as "supporting local small mom/pop shop type businesses instead of corporations". Keep the money local if you want things to improve locally.
I'm glad there is a region lock and I hope it stays that way forever.
Anywho, In regards to the gap, I don't believe it has closed. I think there are a couple foreigner outliers who are extremely good, but foreigners don't have consistency. Koreans are still winning the majority of the tournaments they participate in. If those tournament wins start to even out closer to 50%/50% between koreans and foreigners on a regular basis, Only then could we say the gap has closed.
On August 31 2018 04:07 TheZergishOne wrote: Region lock is slowly strangling the Korean scene and is horrible for SC2 overall.
I disagree.
Every scene EXCEPT for korea is negatively affected when there is no region lock. Koreans just kept taking all the prize money leaving little incentive for local scenes to continue. A long time ago Catz had brought up the subject. I didn't quite understand it then but after reflecting on the last several years of the non-korean scene's development, I feel like he was 100% spot on.
Only one scene is affected by region lock and that is korea. It just means they don't get access to easy money anymore, poor them, right?
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there. In a way, I look at it the same as "supporting local small mom/pop shop type businesses instead of corporations". Keep the money local if you want things to improve locally.
I'm glad there is a region lock and I hope it stays that way forever.
Local scene? Are you talking about Europe and America being local scenes? Not to mention that every foreigner is automatically a member of that local scene. You should rethink "Local". What is this place you are talking about? How does Foreigner winning money helps in any way their local scene (wherever Local is)? Looks like you are a fan of racism. TRUE is the perfect example that this is happening. Everyone but koreans are playing in the same tournaments. Its not even region locked. What advantage does the "korean race" have?
Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
On August 31 2018 04:52 DSK wrote: Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
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)
i do agree region lock is bad like onions mixed with ice cream bad but the issue of seeing the same players play over and over again been an issue since the second half of 2015 i remember seeing the same list of players play dream hack over and over again with only like 5 players swaping which ones they wanted to play time to time
Edit: i also like how almost every the gap is closing thread turns into a debate about region lock and how sc2 is dying thread
The thing is, in terms of prize pool, WCS and GSL are very similar. Global events are a side category. The amount of money the foreigners take from GSL events is not a large amount.
With approximately the same budget, WCS has four tournaments and 20 challengers. GSL has two STs and 3 long tournaments.
There is no challenger to foster growth, and if you don't qualify, you have to wait for months until the next GSL.
The problem is not the region lock, because they have about the same prize pools, and foreign amount taken from GSL is minuscule compared to money won from foreign tournaments from 2011-2015.
The problem is that SC2 is not popular enough in Korea. WCS supports a global scene of many times more the number of players of Korea and a much larger local audience.
On August 31 2018 04:07 TheZergishOne wrote: Region lock is slowly strangling the Korean scene and is horrible for SC2 overall.
I disagree.
Every scene EXCEPT for korea is negatively affected when there is no region lock. Koreans just kept taking all the prize money leaving little incentive for local scenes to continue. A long time ago Catz had brought up the subject. I didn't quite understand it then but after reflecting on the last several years of the non-korean scene's development, I feel like he was 100% spot on.
Only one scene is affected by region lock and that is korea. It just means they don't get access to easy money anymore, poor them, right?
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there. In a way, I look at it the same as "supporting local small mom/pop shop type businesses instead of corporations". Keep the money local if you want things to improve locally.
I'm glad there is a region lock and I hope it stays that way forever.
Anywho, In regards to the gap, I don't believe it has closed. I think there are a couple foreigner outliers who are extremely good, but foreigners don't have consistency. Koreans are still winning the majority of the tournaments they participate in. If those tournament wins start to even out closer to 50%/50% between koreans and foreigners on a regular basis, Only then could we say the gap has closed.
but the problem is that the new competitiveness is with a lower skill level, I would rather watch 16 really great koreans in GSL Code S than watch 16 not-as-good players spread across the world
Out of genuine curiousity, why does it matter to so many SC2 fans what race/nationality a player is? Personally, I'm totally fine with all of my favourite players in a game being Korean or being of any other nationality, even though I'm not Korean myself and do not speak the language.
On August 31 2018 12:30 reincremate wrote: Out of genuine curiousity, why does it matter to so many SC2 fans what race/nationality a player is? Personally, I'm totally fine with all of my favourite players in a game being Korean or being of any other nationality, even though I'm not Korean myself and do not speak the language.
It matters because Korea has dominated every other nation's SC players for 20 years. The skill/lack of skill of non-korean players is a narrative that SC has thrived on for two decades.
On August 31 2018 12:30 reincremate wrote: Out of genuine curiousity, why does it matter to so many SC2 fans what race/nationality a player is? Personally, I'm totally fine with all of my favourite players in a game being Korean or being of any other nationality, even though I'm not Korean myself and do not speak the language.
It matters because Korea has dominated every other nation's SC players for 20 years. The skill/lack of skill of non-korean players is a narrative that SC has thrived on for two decades.
What I'm asking is, why is it even such a big narrative? Why is it anything more than simply acknowledging "yeah, Korea has the best esports infrastructure, culture, etc., and therefore most or all of the top players come from there" and then moving along?
On August 30 2018 02:51 Vutalisk wrote: I never thought Korean scene comes down to the point Maru needed to proxy rax twice in a row to win vs KeeN.
You can't be serious right? Maru proxy raxes everyone, regardless of how good they are. Out of his 10 games in gsl this season, i think 7 or 8 have been proxies. Just because he does it doesn't mean he needs to.
I said that because the first series between them were 2 standard macro games and Maru lost 0-2 to KeeN. In decider match, he proxied twice in a row (same type of proxy too) and won 2-0 within like 10 minutes. Of course, Maru cheeses but the fact he was not confident to go toe to toe with KeeN in standard games is disappointing to me as a viewer especially in the past Maru was not cheesing as much as he does these days. Hey, does whatever it takes to win. I don't blame him for doing it.
Yah Maru going up to 3CC too early and dying to three cyclones is a great example of a "standard macro game". Just because the games technically went on for longer doesn't mean Maru hadn't lost.
Him proxy-ing every other game isn't new either. Even his 2013 OSL run was full of it.
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there.
Where's this place for koreans?
Seconded
GSL. The person only said "reside." Arguably, the foreigners who play in GSL also reside there (I am aware that reside also means permanent residence, but it also means "to live").
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there.
Where's this place for koreans?
Seconded
GSL. The person only said "reside." Arguably, the foreigners who play in GSL also reside there (I am aware that reside also means permanent residence, but it also means "to live").
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.
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.
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
True plays in NA WCS.
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..
Every place should have their own scene with tournaments only for those who reside there.
Where's this place for koreans?
Seconded
GSL. The person only said "reside." Arguably, the foreigners who play in GSL also reside there (I am aware that reside also means permanent residence, but it also means "to live").
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
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.
If you are talking about closing the gap between the Korean scene, we shouldn't just be talking about the individual performance of players like Serral and Neeb. We should also be looking at the difference in MMR rating on the ladder. There is still a gap there. The Korean ladder is still +/- 150-350 (differs per league and tier) higher.
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
True plays in NA WCS.
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
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
True plays in NA WCS.
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.
With that definition koreans should be allowed to compete in WCS if they live abroad.
True plays in NA WCS.
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.
The fact that when Korean team houses all closed their SC2 teams (aside from jin air), we lost SSL and almost lost GSL (essentially the ENTIRE Korean scene) blizzard sat back and said nothing tells me everything I need to know. We lost a ton of pros right at the beginning of lotv and region lock too. Neither of these things were enough to make blizzard reconsider the region lock.
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.
The goal of the system has never been to be fair. Its goal is to promote SC2 e-sports all over the world. And it is working way better with region lock as without region lock.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On August 31 2018 04:52 DSK wrote: Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
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*.
On August 31 2018 04:52 DSK wrote: Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
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?
On August 31 2018 04:52 DSK wrote: Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
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*.
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 05:06 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.
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 August 31 2018 04:52 DSK wrote: Mind the gap between the Foreign hype train and the Korean platform.
OT: I'm glad that foreigners are doing better against Korean opponents but I'm deeply gutted that it is at the cost of the Korean scene losing player spots, with Foreigners allowed to double dip into GSL and WCS.
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.
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
I prefer WCS event production levels but love Tastetosis and seeing Foreigner vs. Korean. Maybe nxt year there can be two GSL vs World, spring and summer, to further tease Blizzcon.
I still say the gap between foreigners and Korea is still closing. The loss of Pro League really hurt the level of play Korea. You also have upcoming players like Reynor and Clem and other young foreigners. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2019 if that gap can finally be closed.
Personally, I really liked the 2013 system- develop lots of circuits with different players in each, regularly coming together. Korean players competing in every circuit but exclusively. With the new diversity of foreign skill, I think it could work really well. I think it's at least worth trying again for a year.
let alone the blizzcon cup,Serral moving to round 4 after 3-0 Dark is enough to make those foreigner haters STFU i don't know what are they still trying to prove at this point tbh...they should've STFU'd since neeb 4-0'd trap
I believe the earlier result today is highly interesting to this discussion. Ptitdrogo topping a group with Solar, Fantasy, Zest and Gumiho. Sure the new patch is a factor to consider but the sheer insanity of that result is just baffling. The more games I see the more I tend to agree, foreigners are caught up.
On December 03 2018 09:37 Shuffleblade wrote: I believe the earlier result today is highly interesting to this discussion. Ptitdrogo topping a group with Solar, Fantasy, Zest and Gumiho. Sure the new patch is a factor to consider but the sheer insanity of that result is just baffling. The more games I see the more I tend to agree, foreigners are caught up.
There are a couple things to consider, like the tournament being online and also during the break, which is where people tend not to practice as much. In general, online tournaments don't have as much weight as offline tournaments.
However, I would generally agree with this sentiment. Sure, top Koreans are still better than non-Serral top foreigners, but all around, you have so many more foreigners playing quite competitive games with their Korean counterparts. Before, it was almost a given that practically any decent Korean would be pretty much any foreigner, but now, you take Neeb against any non-Dark/Maru/Stats opponent, and I think he gives the Korean a run for their money.
Regional lock is one of the reasons why the korean scene is dying, because of lack of tournaments and competition and therefore reduced sponsorship and so on... I can't tell if the quality of gameplay has reduced because of it, but the lack of new blood in the korean scene Is disturbing for the longevity of the scene.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
And lower quality games, fuck yeah.
Not necessarily lower quality games, Serral is playing at possibly the highest zerg level we have every seen in sc2,
Foreigners can't compete with Serral with a region lock, so we either A) let Serral win everything or B) spread the love for Koreans to keep that scene alive. I never liked the region lock to begin with, but keeping it given the current state of the game and the decline of the foreigners seems difficult to justify.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
And lower quality games, fuck yeah.
Serral vs Reynor at Valentia (i think it was there) finals was much better than any GSL Code S final this year. So I don't know about that quality...
honestly there are too many foreigners "improving fast" for it to be believable, serral/scarlett/drogo etc., I mean look at Special, he wasnt good enough to take even a single game in proleague, now he is one of the very best players out there, to me everything points to koreans getting worse because of the lack of incentive to play sc2.
On December 04 2018 15:06 IshinShishi wrote: honestly there are too many foreigners "improving fast" for it to be believable, serral/scarlett/drogo etc., I mean look at Special, he wasnt good enough to take even a single game in proleague, now he is one of the very best players out there, to me everything points to koreans getting worse because of the lack of incentive to play sc2.
There's no doubt that the Korean scene is getting worse, and it's debatable the extent that region lock has on it as opposed to the Life scandals, the Prime scandals, Sbenu, or proleague closing down. I think part of it is the fact that foreigners are better able to spend time in Korea without being financial drained thanks to Project Unity and NoRegreT. Special and TY are pretty good friends and even train together a lot, so it's not surprising that Special would be good.
The thing is, all the top foreigners have been around for a long time. Neeb and Serral might not have been as good, but they were around during HotS. Meanwhile, the others, like Special and Scarlett, have been around for ages. I think what we're seeing is what happens when pros can have their own competitive space and can train without having to worry as much about the financial burden. I don't think it can be understated how having a region locked space can help a scene develop its own competitive meta.
However, the top of the Korean scene is still the top of the Korean scene, and if you're up there, you can make thousands and thousands of dollars, so I feel that if motivation is a problem, it's due less to the region lock and more to intrinsic motivation. Players only have themselves for motivation as opposed to their teams, so they're in the same boat as the foreigners. If you're at the top of the Korean scene, then I feel that motivation is on you and not on anyone else. If you're on top, you have the three GSLs, IEM Katowice, Blizzcon, WESG, and potentially some smaller tournaments inbetween. When you have the same number of tournaments as Serral, and motivation is the problem, that's not region lock's fault; that's the player's fault.
On December 03 2018 15:24 RealityTheGreat wrote: Only for Serral uthermal Major ShowTime Neeb scarlett
Ppl seem to forget Reynor :/
Not necessarily lower quality games, Serral is playing at possibly the highest zerg level we have every seen in sc2,
I know that some pro really hyped serral level of play like this but come on, Taeja just proved how wrong it was. He is amazing but that's not the hightest skill area, even for zerg gameplay.
On December 04 2018 15:06 IshinShishi wrote: honestly there are too many foreigners "improving fast" for it to be believable, serral/scarlett/drogo etc., I mean look at Special, he wasnt good enough to take even a single game in proleague, now he is one of the very best players out there, to me everything points to koreans getting worse because of the lack of incentive to play sc2.
There's no doubt that the Korean scene is getting worse, and it's debatable the extent that region lock has on it as opposed to the Life scandals, the Prime scandals, Sbenu, or proleague closing down. I think part of it is the fact that foreigners are better able to spend time in Korea without being financial drained thanks to Project Unity and NoRegreT. Special and TY are pretty good friends and even train together a lot, so it's not surprising that Special would be good.
The thing is, all the top foreigners have been around for a long time. Neeb and Serral might not have been as good, but they were around during HotS. Meanwhile, the others, like Special and Scarlett, have been around for ages. I think what we're seeing is what happens when pros can have their own competitive space and can train without having to worry as much about the financial burden. I don't think it can be understated how having a region locked space can help a scene develop its own competitive meta.
However, the top of the Korean scene is still the top of the Korean scene, and if you're up there, you can make thousands and thousands of dollars, so I feel that if motivation is a problem, it's due less to the region lock and more to intrinsic motivation. Players only have themselves for motivation as opposed to their teams, so they're in the same boat as the foreigners. If you're at the top of the Korean scene, then I feel that motivation is on you and not on anyone else. If you're on top, you have the three GSLs, IEM Katowice, Blizzcon, WESG, and potentially some smaller tournaments inbetween. When you have the same number of tournaments as Serral, and motivation is the problem, that's not region lock's fault; that's the player's fault.
Well, I think the whole Korean team house system was a bit fucked up to be honest. It was great for creating amazing StarCraft players, but I think it handicapped them in terms of their development and future prospects. Many players joined from an very young age, some not even finishing secondary school. This in a society where most students spend ridiculous hours studying or in cram schools to prepare for the extremely competitive university entrance exams. There's intense pressure to do well in school; 70% of Koreans go to university, and virtually all complete some form of post-secondary education.
With the rapid collapse of the scene over the past couple years and military service looming as well, it's easy to see why many of them would be looking past SC2. I recall Dark recently mentioned in his stream that after years of practicing for obscene hours, he did not find SC fun. I suspect trying to go back to school at this point would be extremely challenging in the Korean system relative to the West, and I wonder if many players continue in part because the alternatives aren't so great.
Good things done by Blizzard. 1. Region Lock. 2. Letting the game become FTP. 3. Yearly design patches keeping the game fresh. 4. Co-op.
Bad things done by Blizzard 1. Letting BroodLord/Infestor dominate for too long. 2. Letting Carriers be OP in team games for too long. 3. Not acting fast enough when hacking becomes more widespread. 4. Thinking making the Tempest superfast and keeping it at 15 range would be a good idea.
Region Lock and FTP are the best things Blizzard has ever done for the game. Region Lock may be slightly damaging to Korea but since it improved SC2 in the rest of the world it is a small price to pay.
what is your suggestion to making carriers be less 'OP' in team games? because i played team games back before this recent change and i can think of 4 solutions off the top. 1. punish new bases 2. taking your own bases 3. mixing in air, all you need to do is kill the carriers once. 4. encompassing all of the above, scouting.
the units are pretty trivial when you know they are coming and you know how to deal with phoenixes as a team.
On December 04 2018 18:27 nanaoei wrote: what is your suggestion to making carriers be less 'OP' in team games? because i played team games back before this recent change and i can think of 4 solutions off the top. 1. punish new bases 2. taking your own bases 3. mixing in air, all you need to do is kill the carriers once. 4. encompassing all of the above, scouting.
the units are pretty trivial when you know they are coming and you know how to deal with phoenixes as a team.
What I meant is that Blizzard let Carriers be OP in team games for years. They have probably solved it now by increasing interceptor build time, but it should have been done much earlier.
that's the point i'm referring to. it was never really an issue unless you and your teammates were playing it poorly, or had no idea the carriers were happening. i have over 5k games in team as random masters and don't recall the overpoweredness of the unit.
right now you can easily kill all interceptors using any T1 ground to air unit.
even so, the change was for 1v1, not for games across the board. i don't think they have ever balanced for team games at all. however, i think you could say the map pool for various seasons of team 2v2 & 3v3 have been awful.
The only T1 unit that i can see winning against critical mass interceps are marines. And that is only if the toss is brain dead (fighting on open field, only carriers). The big reason carriers are op is because they fuck up the ai that will attack the interceps. So you can mix everything else in (meaning void rays). Even if the toss looses the fight with the interceps gone he can just fly away thanks to these awful maps. And then he can rebuild the interceps of a single carrier for the price of ~2.5 marines ... The map design is also so awful that if they are "smart" enough it's close to impossible to stop them with only ground units before they reach air, because all players are in the same spot, with 2 expansions for each. So you don't have to break the defence of a single player, but of all 3 and on top they get rewarded for spamming cans at the small entrance into their base by getting 2 expansions for "free". So you either break the defence or fail and irrelevant of the outcome the game is over. Instead of making the game interesting by spacing players out and revolving the game about scouting and territory control it is dumbed down immensely into a do nothing and amass your op army to win. There is a reason that in 90% of the games i play i see canrush (thx again for these "great" maps) and/or toss air. And i see a lot of lesser capable players being top masters just because of the op of this stuff.
Not necessarily lower quality games, Serral is playing at possibly the highest zerg level we have every seen in sc2,
I know that some pro really hyped serral level of play like this but come on, Taeja just proved how wrong it was. He is amazing but that's not the hightest skill area, even for zerg gameplay.
That doesn't mean anything. Serral just was having bad games by his standard; he is literally another level, just look at how he played at BlizzCon.
On December 04 2018 18:56 nanaoei wrote: that's the point i'm referring to. it was never really an issue unless you and your teammates were playing it poorly, or had no idea the carriers were happening. i have over 5k games in team as random masters and don't recall the overpoweredness of the unit.
right now you can easily kill all interceptors using any T1 ground to air unit.
even so, the change was for 1v1, not for games across the board. i don't think they have ever balanced for team games at all. however, i think you could say the map pool for various seasons of team 2v2 & 3v3 have been awful.
Then you haven't played enough. Carriers alone allow absolute trash players to play in masters 1 3v3 because they are so op, these guys just sit there making probes and carriers with 60 apm while two other players focus on defence, regardless of all the answers availablpe, just the simple fact that these gold lvl players can get to masters by abusing carriers is enough to warrant a nerf.
On December 04 2018 18:56 nanaoei wrote: that's the point i'm referring to. it was never really an issue unless you and your teammates were playing it poorly, or had no idea the carriers were happening. i have over 5k games in team as random masters and don't recall the overpoweredness of the unit.
right now you can easily kill all interceptors using any T1 ground to air unit.
even so, the change was for 1v1, not for games across the board. i don't think they have ever balanced for team games at all. however, i think you could say the map pool for various seasons of team 2v2 & 3v3 have been awful.
Then you haven't played enough. Carriers alone allow absolute trash players to play in masters 1 3v3 because they are so op, these guys just sit there making probes and carriers with 60 apm while two other players focus on defence, regardless of all the answers availablpe, just the simple fact that these gold lvl players can get to masters by abusing carriers is enough to warrant a nerf.
This game isn;t balanced around 3v3. You can't get to masters with this strategy in 1v1, can you?
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
And lower quality games, fuck yeah.
Serral vs Reynor at Valentia (i think it was there) finals was much better than any GSL Code S final this year. So I don't know about that quality...
he's talking about the skill level we see - not about how entertaining the games are.
On August 30 2018 08:20 Rodya wrote: I really can't empathize with people that say that region lock is a success because they feel better about watching region locked events. A lot of people will not watch SC2 anymore if the Korean scene dies
But the opposite is true. When foreigners perform better, the viewership has gone up. Viewership for WCS Valencia and GSL vs the World have been off the charts compared to previous years.
This belief that SC2 has to have a thriving scene in Korea is nonsense. Other successful games out there don't require a single country to keep the popularity of the game up. What matters is total viewership.
SC2 always had poor Korean viewership. If foreigners take over the SC2 scene, it may possibly lead to higher SC2 viewership numbers overall.
And lower quality games, fuck yeah.
Serral vs Reynor at Valentia (i think it was there) finals was much better than any GSL Code S final this year. So I don't know about that quality...
he's talking about the skill level we see - not about how entertaining the games are.
Well, maybe Code S finals, but Maru v Rogue RO8 Season 2(I believe) was top notch TvZ quality you hardly see in foreigner lands. It's just GSL mistake they didn't put Maru and Rogue on the other side as Blizzard did with Serral Anyway, considering it was RO8 Rogue it's even more impressive
And Maru TY was great. (and the fact TY died to his own strategy is even more yummy).
Sorry to necro this thread, but after the performance of the foreigners in GSL vs the World, I think this subject deserves discussion again. I think the best in the foreign scene may have caught up to the best in the Korean scene by this tournament.
It was mainly Serral last year that was a step above the Korean players. But more and more foreign players are capable of beating Korean players these days.
The demise of Pro-League probably contributed to the lower skill of Koreans. But some of the Koreans are getting old too (Classic, Soo, etc), while the foreign scene still has young blood coming in such as Reynor, Clem, etc. Because there is young blood coming in the foreign scene, but there is no young blood coming into Korea, the balance will tip more and more towards the foreign scene in the coming years.
This GSL vs the World won't be the last time that 2 foreigners make it to the finals over the top Koreans. We will have more and more tournaments in the future where the foreign players will outperform the Korean players.
The death of Pro League and the second coming of Brood War has finally put the koreans at even odds with foreigners, simple as that. For a decade koreans had the vastly superior training environment compared to all other regions. Now we have a level playing field and it's really interesting to watch.
On August 18 2019 02:54 xelnaga_empire wrote: Sorry to necro this thread, but after the performance of the foreigners in GSL vs the World, I think this subject deserves discussion again. I think the best in the foreign scene may have caught up to the best in the Korean scene by this tournament.
It was mainly Serral last year that was a step above the Korean players. But more and more foreign players are capable of beating Korean players these days.
The demise of Pro-League probably contributed to the lower skill of Koreans. But some of the Koreans are getting old too (Classic, Soo, etc), while the foreign scene still has young blood coming in such as Reynor, Clem, etc. Because there is young blood coming in the foreign scene, but there is no young blood coming into Korea, the balance will tip more and more towards the foreign scene in the coming years.
This GSL vs the World won't be the last time that 2 foreigners make it to the finals over the top Koreans. We will have more and more tournaments in the future where the foreign players will outperform the Korean players.
Time to remove region lock now that foreigners are super competitive with the koreans. Otherwise korean skill will just shrink and it will badly hurt the entire starcraft scene. Perfect time to remove the region lock.
let's be real: while players like neeb, reynor, special, time, showtime can certainly compete, they are still the underdogs vs the top koreans. it's still just serral being dominant. after him and around him, there is all korean competition. there certainly is still a minor gap between foreigners and koreans overall - and the KR server is still slightly stronger than the EU server. The gap is minor though nowadays. Very positive the difference between NA GM and EU GM is larger.
On August 18 2019 03:50 KalWarkov wrote: let's be real: while players like neeb, reynor, special, time, showtime can certainly compete, they are still the underdogs vs the top koreans. it's still just serral being dominant. after him and around him, there is all korean competition. there certainly is still a minor gap between foreigners and koreans overall - and the KR server is still slightly stronger than the EU server. The gap is minor though nowadays. Very positive the difference between NA GM and EU GM is larger.
I agree. Gap is smaller but I think some people are trying to use this tournament to push narratives (whether it be death of Korean scene or EU>=KR). imo, they both have a decent point but at the end of the day, top 10 players is still Serral and 9 Koreans (occasionally there may be 2 foreigners in top 10). Koreans are not as strong as before but they are still a cut above the other countries in terms of player's skill. Just because Neeb beats Stats now doesn't erase the fact that he was 0-7 against him in recent matches before this one. Dark was 6-3 against Elazer before this series. Upsets do happen. In fact, I recall GSL Season 2 being upsets galore.
On August 18 2019 03:37 NinjaNight wrote: Time to remove region lock now that foreigners are super competitive with the koreans. Otherwise korean skill will just shrink and it will badly hurt the entire starcraft scene. Perfect time to remove the region lock.
Do you guys really believe the likes of neeb and elazer can consistently win against top koreans? Not even they themselves believe that. The only non-korean who has proved themselves is serral, all his games were vs koreans and he won them all while elazer and neeb each only played one korean.
On August 18 2019 05:54 WeakOwl wrote: Do you guys really believe the likes of neeb and elazer can consistently win against top koreans? Not even they themselves believe that. The only non-korean who has proved themselves is serral, all his games were vs koreans and he won them all while elazer and neeb each only played one korean.
Of course not. Not even koreans can consistently win against koreans. That's why Maru can win a GSL and then get eliminated R1 of super tournament, soo can win katowice and get dropped in ro16 of gsl and so on.
On August 18 2019 05:54 WeakOwl wrote: Do you guys really believe the likes of neeb and elazer can consistently win against top koreans? Not even they themselves believe that. The only non-korean who has proved themselves is serral, all his games were vs koreans and he won them all while elazer and neeb each only played one korean.
Of course not. Not even koreans can consistently win against koreans. That's why Maru can win a GSL and then get eliminated R1 of super tournament, soo can win katowice and get dropped in ro16 of gsl and so on.
On August 18 2019 07:55 rasi86 wrote: The gap hasnt closed for all though. only for Z players since Z is way too strong in all MUs
Yeah I have to agree with you, Elazer won vs Dark 3-2 (even though elazer threw 2 games he lost) because zerg is OP in ZvZ. TIME won vs SoO 3-0 because zerg is so strong it was too much to soO to handle and he couldn't control all the OPiness. Neeb 3-1ed Stats, who is considered the best protoss in korea because zerg is OP. It's absurdly clear that gap only seems closing because zerg is OP now, and not because it's actually closing.
On August 18 2019 03:50 KalWarkov wrote: let's be real: while players like neeb, reynor, special, time, showtime can certainly compete, they are still the underdogs vs the top koreans. it's still just serral being dominant. after him and around him, there is all korean competition. there certainly is still a minor gap between foreigners and koreans overall - and the KR server is still slightly stronger than the EU server. The gap is minor though nowadays. Very positive the difference between NA GM and EU GM is larger.
I don't feel like this is a meaningful point, because while medium level foreigners can't beat top Koreans, medium level Koreans also can't beat top foreigners. We often times forget that the players getting the most screwed by the region lock are the Koreans who aren't winning tournaments, and are also now locked out of half the tournaments in the year.
On August 18 2019 03:50 KalWarkov wrote: let's be real: while players like neeb, reynor, special, time, showtime can certainly compete, they are still the underdogs vs the top koreans. it's still just serral being dominant. after him and around him, there is all korean competition. there certainly is still a minor gap between foreigners and koreans overall - and the KR server is still slightly stronger than the EU server. The gap is minor though nowadays. Very positive the difference between NA GM and EU GM is larger.
I agree. Gap is smaller but I think some people are trying to use this tournament to push narratives (whether it be death of Korean scene or EU>=KR). imo, they both have a decent point but at the end of the day, top 10 players is still Serral and 9 Koreans (occasionally there may be 2 foreigners in top 10). Koreans are not as strong as before but they are still a cut above the other countries in terms of player's skill. Just because Neeb beats Stats now doesn't erase the fact that he was 0-7 against him in recent matches before this one. Dark was 6-3 against Elazer before this series. Upsets do happen. In fact, I recall GSL Season 2 being upsets galore.
People shouldn't also use IEM Katowice to make us believe that alone mirror the truth regarding the balance of power between korean and foreigners, but they do. Never before in the history of Starcraft foreigners outperformed koreans that hard in a Premier tournament, the gap seemed to exist backwards this weekend.
However, I agree that koreans are stronger and that the majority of top players are from GSL(I wouldn't say 9/10 plus Serral, more like 7). I'm not sure Korean Zerg are still stronger than their european counterparts, undoubtly they aren't in the mirror matchup and the best Zerg is not from Korea.
I expect to see koreans performing better next BlizzCon, but foreign players are now legit and the creation of global scene could be a good thing; it would need to be heavily redesigned, in any of case.
On August 18 2019 02:54 xelnaga_empire wrote: Sorry to necro this thread, but after the performance of the foreigners in GSL vs the World, I think this subject deserves discussion again. I think the best in the foreign scene may have caught up to the best in the Korean scene by this tournament.
Wow, falling into the seductive trap of overblowing the significance of the most recent result when it supports your opinion
It's too bad Charisaur didn't make a thread called "the gap is as large as ever" and necro it after ASUS ROG. Then we'd have some inter-forum meta comedy on our hands.
It's ridiculous that people still believe that the top Koreans are still as strong as before. Mechanic are definitely much worse, just look at Inno, Soo, Classic. While others like Maru, Stats, TY, Dark are still fast and precise, their mind game and strategy preparation are miles behind the pre 2017 era (2018's Maru might be exception becoz of Jinair). Of course top foreigners are also so much better than before, but saying top Korean are still strong in nonsense for Starcraft II fans (if you 've been following the scene since the beginning, you would know that).
The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
The gap was always due to the Korean infrastructure advantage, it makes sense that foreigners start to beat Koreans 2-3 years after that infrastructure disappears.
Sort of the opposite from LoL where the rest of the world adopted team houses and coaches and eventually caught up to Korean results.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
exactly, I mean, the finalist of one of the most prestigious tournaments these days makes 10 more overlods than he needs at 90 supply almost every game, skill level has indeed taken a sharp decline.
On August 19 2019 01:11 TrashEconomy wrote: I think most level heads would say there's been a decline of skill more than there's been a real closing of the gap that was originally hoped for.
Foreigners have got better at the game with region lock, just watching the games and the level of play.
The gap has gradually closed, it used to be seen as something to cheer if a foreigner beat basically any Korean, even the C rank guys or the occasional B teamer, with the occasional outlier like Stephano.
I wouldn’t dispute a decline, equally in a separate timeline I don’t think today’s good foreigners would struggle to that degree.
Another factor is that foreigners rarely play in tournaments against the same tier of Korean as used to be the case. If it’s an international tournament it’s a mixed set of foreigners ability wise, plus usually S tier Koreans.
It would probably illustrate more starkly how the gap has closed if we did see foreigners playing Code A/fringe Code S Ro32 players more often. Granted post-military but Bomber and Taeja got smacked at ASUS ROG recently.
Yeah, not really. Serral and Elazer made it to the finals, cool. That doesn't mean anything (maybe some are having a bad tournie, maybe Elazer is really on point right now, etc.). Don't forget all the times Koreans have previously wrecked foreigners in tournaments. Serral is very good, yes, but so are many Koreans, and last I checked, there are more good Koreans than one Serral.
If Europeans can keep solid, consistent records, then maybe you can begin to argue your point about "The Gap," but one tournament result is not how to go about claiming this.
On August 18 2019 07:55 rasi86 wrote: The gap hasnt closed for all though. only for Z players since Z is way too strong in all MUs
that's such an irrational comment dood. "it has only closed for Z players cuz Z is imba" well shouldn't korea be dominated by zerg players as well if its a race issue?
On August 19 2019 03:07 Phattyasmo wrote: Yeah, not really. Serral and Elazer made it to the finals, cool. That doesn't mean anything (maybe some are having a bad tournie, maybe Elazer is really on point right now, etc.). Don't forget all the times Koreans have previously wrecked foreigners in tournaments. Serral is very good, yes, but so are many Koreans, and last I checked, there are more good Koreans than one Serral.
If Europeans can keep solid, consistent records, then maybe you can begin to argue your point about "The Gap," but one tournament result is not how to go about claiming this.
Neeb beat Stats. Special almost beat Classic. The 2 best Protoss in the world. Time 3-0d soO, who was then beaten by Elazer - who himself beat Dark.
1 result? what? And it's not only this tournament. top end koreans lost quite a few series against top foreigners in the past year.
Also, Serral consistantly wins touranments with koreans in them. he's won like 4/7 events with high level korean participation. not 1 single korean has won 2 of those events. he's clearly the best.
yes, the next 5-6 players are koreans - but the top 30 of all players has about 10-12 foreigners in it. in the old times, it was 28-29 koreans.
On August 19 2019 03:07 Phattyasmo wrote: Yeah, not really. Serral and Elazer made it to the finals, cool. That doesn't mean anything (maybe some are having a bad tournie, maybe Elazer is really on point right now, etc.). Don't forget all the times Koreans have previously wrecked foreigners in tournaments. Serral is very good, yes, but so are many Koreans, and last I checked, there are more good Koreans than one Serral.
If Europeans can keep solid, consistent records, then maybe you can begin to argue your point about "The Gap," but one tournament result is not how to go about claiming this.
Neeb beat Stats. Special almost beat Classic. The 2 best Protoss in the world. Time 3-0d soO, who was then beaten by Elazer - who himself beat Dark.
1 result? what? And it's not only this tournament. top end koreans lost quite a few series against top foreigners in the past year.
Also, Serral consistantly wins touranments with koreans in them. he's won like 4/7 events with high level korean participation. not 1 single korean has won 2 of those events. he's clearly the best.
yes, the next 5-6 players are koreans - but the top 30 of all players has about 10-12 foreigners in it. in the old times, it was 28-29 koreans.
Can you list those 12 foreigners? and the koreans too please, not in a particular order. Just name them.
On August 19 2019 03:07 Phattyasmo wrote: Yeah, not really. Serral and Elazer made it to the finals, cool. That doesn't mean anything (maybe some are having a bad tournie, maybe Elazer is really on point right now, etc.). Don't forget all the times Koreans have previously wrecked foreigners in tournaments. Serral is very good, yes, but so are many Koreans, and last I checked, there are more good Koreans than one Serral.
If Europeans can keep solid, consistent records, then maybe you can begin to argue your point about "The Gap," but one tournament result is not how to go about claiming this.
Neeb beat Stats. Special almost beat Classic. The 2 best Protoss in the world. Time 3-0d soO, who was then beaten by Elazer - who himself beat Dark.
1 result? what? And it's not only this tournament. top end koreans lost quite a few series against top foreigners in the past year.
Also, Serral consistantly wins touranments with koreans in them. he's won like 4/7 events with high level korean participation. not 1 single korean has won 2 of those events. he's clearly the best.
yes, the next 5-6 players are koreans - but the top 30 of all players has about 10-12 foreigners in it. in the old times, it was 28-29 koreans.
Can you list those 12 foreigners? and the koreans too please, not in a particular order. Just name them.
I guess the ones who were at GSL vs The World plus Lambo/Scarlett? That would be a pretty good top 10 I guess. Maybe Drogo, uThermal, Harstem next? Not sure how many would be in the top 30 overall though.
On August 19 2019 03:07 Phattyasmo wrote: Yeah, not really. Serral and Elazer made it to the finals, cool. That doesn't mean anything (maybe some are having a bad tournie, maybe Elazer is really on point right now, etc.). Don't forget all the times Koreans have previously wrecked foreigners in tournaments. Serral is very good, yes, but so are many Koreans, and last I checked, there are more good Koreans than one Serral.
If Europeans can keep solid, consistent records, then maybe you can begin to argue your point about "The Gap," but one tournament result is not how to go about claiming this.
Neeb beat Stats. Special almost beat Classic. The 2 best Protoss in the world. Time 3-0d soO, who was then beaten by Elazer - who himself beat Dark.
1 result? what? And it's not only this tournament. top end koreans lost quite a few series against top foreigners in the past year.
Also, Serral consistantly wins touranments with koreans in them. he's won like 4/7 events with high level korean participation. not 1 single korean has won 2 of those events. he's clearly the best.
yes, the next 5-6 players are koreans - but the top 30 of all players has about 10-12 foreigners in it. in the old times, it was 28-29 koreans.
Can you list those 12 foreigners? and the koreans too please, not in a particular order. Just name them.
I guess the ones who were at GSL vs The World plus Lambo/Scarlett? That would be a pretty good top 10 I guess. Maybe Drogo, uThermal, Harstem next? Not sure how many would be in the top 30 overall though.
It’s difficult to tell, let’s say the rank 10-25 foreigners don’t really play their Korean equivalents all that often, so ranking them is tricky.
If we’re talking top 50 players in the world, there has to at least be 20 foreigners in there, I can’t really think on what the order would be, but it seems a reasonable estimate.
Outside of really early WoL when guys in the foreign scene went full time even in beta, for a vast chunk of SC2’s existence no foreign player has come anywhere near being a consensus best in the world player, and the foreign scene would be lucky to have more than 5 or so players in the world’s top 50, give or take.
That some of this is due to systemic problems in Korea post-Kespa sure, to deny the gap has closed or that foreigners haven’t improved I think is a bit silly frankly.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Obviously the gap is closing, I think people are overreacting on these results though. If you just look at how all the koreans got knocked out it almost looks like the tables have turned. But if you look at the actual matchups and what happened its not so weird.
Elazer beat Dark, sure its an upset but we are talking one of the best european zerg, EU ZvZ is beast and Elazer has done it before. I was not suprised.
Time beat soO, sure I'm shocked at this, it really proves foreigners are improving overall when new foreigners that aren't the holy four comes in and dominates over an established korean like this.
Neeb beat Stats in PvP, Neeb has done it before, the tournament he won was also due to his stellar PvP. I bet on Stats and I did not expect this but it is not surprising really.
Can we not even mention Serrals wins? He is Serral, yes he beat TY, Trap and Classic and I am not surprised.
Only Time vs soO was surprising here none of the other results are really worth all this fuss.
As I previously mentioned I don't disagree with the fact that the gap is closing but this tournament doesn't add much to that.
On August 19 2019 00:06 IshinShishi wrote: exactly, I mean, the finalist of one of the most prestigious tournaments these days makes 10 more overlods than he needs at 90 supply almost every game, skill level has indeed taken a sharp decline.
i d think its the other way around, a finallist these days can make 10 overlords more n he needs at almost every game and because he s there and you are not, the decision to make those 10 ovis clearly must have some benefit that you are just unable to discover and or recreate. Hence your arrogant but clearly mistaken view that overall skill level must have declined. Plus i find it quite distasteful to downplay someones hard earned achievements.
On August 19 2019 04:35 Shuffleblade wrote: Neeb beat Stats in PvP, Neeb has done it before, the tournament he won was also due to his stellar PvP. I bet on Stats and I did not expect this but it is not surprising really.
I can't really speak for any other player, but Neeb's PvP after his 2016 victory has been a lot less impressive. In 2017 during his impressive WCS runs, he consistently went to the 3 or 5 game max again players like against Probe (3-2) and ShoWTimE (3-2).
Then in 2018, he got knocked out of WCS by PvP three times, twice by ShoWTimE (2-3, 2-3) and once by Mana (0-3). He lost 2-3 in Cheesadelphia again Mcanning, and despite that tournament being much lower in scope, I think we can all agree Neeb should be able to win in a bo5. Even in Asus, Neeb lost against Zest 2-0 twice (despite beating PtitDrogo twice in recent past, once at Asus, and the other in WCS 3-1).
He's consistently lost offline again Korean Protoss like Trap, Classic, PartinG, Zest, and herO (though he also beat herO in 2018), Hurricane (again, PvP master), and Stats. In fact, I don't think he's won a single map against Stats since 2016.
So certainly, his PvP has done better (sort of) in 2019, but given Neeb's form against Korean Protoss, which, since 2017 has not been stellar, with around 45% map winrate on and offline and 37.78% map win offline.
I hope the time to scrap the Korean/Foreigner classification all together comes soon. I don't know any other sport where a nation is commonly described that dominantly, even though it could make sense in the NFL for example.
On August 19 2019 17:45 Slydie wrote: I hope the time to scrap the Korean/Foreigner classification all together comes soon. I don't know any other sport where a nation is commonly described that dominantly, even though it could make sense in the NFL for example.
It is definitely time to get rid of region lock at this point. The Korean scene is already doing pretty poorly - if we don't do something to revive it, it will die altogether, and that is not something any of us want to happen.
On August 19 2019 18:14 Psychonian wrote: It is definitely time to get rid of region lock at this point. The Korean scene is already doing pretty poorly - if we don't do something to revive it, it will die altogether, and that is not something any of us want to happen.
Why would the Korean scene die just because Korea isn't dominant any more?
I don't understand the requirement that Korea needs to be dominant. I think SC2 would be quite healthy if there were dominant players from around the world, other than just Korea. The more continents that have dominant players, the better for the game. And as long as Korea has some top world players (rather than having ALL the top players), I think the Korean scene will do okay.
On August 19 2019 18:14 Psychonian wrote: It is definitely time to get rid of region lock at this point. The Korean scene is already doing pretty poorly - if we don't do something to revive it, it will die altogether, and that is not something any of us want to happen.
Why would the Korean scene die just because Korea isn't dominant any more?
I don't understand the requirement that Korea needs to be dominant. I think SC2 would be quite healthy if there were dominant players from around the world, other than just Korea. The more continents that have dominant players, the better for the game. And as long as Korea has some top world players (rather than having ALL the top players), I think the Korean scene will do okay.
I don't think his/her point is to have Korea be dominant, but the balancing of opportunities for Korean players; foreigners can play in WCS events and GSL. Koreans can play in one or the other. I also believe that at the last ASUS ROG even Koreans didn't get WCS points.
You might have noticed that the more successful players in GSL vs the World are living in the foreigner house in Korea and play in the GSL (Elazer, Neeb, SpeCial). Serral is an exception for the most part I believe.
Foreign players have more opportunities than Korean players. Yes, in the past Koreaners and B teamers ruled the roost in WCS but LotV's pace and necessity for multitasking and in the last few years, easier access to Korean ladder has led to foreigners being far more competitive. With less GSL slots going to Koreans, and less high reward tournaments for them to take part in, there is a belief that the Korea player base will be snuffed out as there is no new blood entering their scene.
This is just my take on things as I see them. I would be happy to be wrong about it, though .
On August 19 2019 18:14 Psychonian wrote: It is definitely time to get rid of region lock at this point. The Korean scene is already doing pretty poorly - if we don't do something to revive it, it will die altogether, and that is not something any of us want to happen.
Why would the Korean scene die just because Korea isn't dominant any more?
I don't understand the requirement that Korea needs to be dominant. I think SC2 would be quite healthy if there were dominant players from around the world, other than just Korea. The more continents that have dominant players, the better for the game. And as long as Korea has some top world players (rather than having ALL the top players), I think the Korean scene will do okay.
DSK added some valid points, I will try to expand further.
The problem is not that korea is not as dominant anymore, that in itself is fine, the problem is why.
Koreans are locked out of most tournaments outside of GSL and GSL in itself does not present enough money to go around. Additional opportunities for more income and exposure is few and far between and the reason for that is because the sc2 fanbase in korea is very small.
Basically most of sc2 fanbase is outside of korea, historically the best sc2 players and games have been in korea. This is what happens when you lock the strongest region out from most of the tournaments, the scene withers. Even if there were up and comers in korea they "can't" go pro because to earn any money on sc2 in korea you need to crack ro16 GSL, as a noname that is almost impossible.
Before regionlock, strong GSL contenders left korea to play internationally opening up slots in GSL, like MMA, Polt, Hydra and so on. Up and coming korean players left korea to try to find success abroad which gave them room to develop as players, like Stardust, Impact or Heart.
Now when that avenue is closed korea is suffocating, new blood has no way forward unless they want to go all in to try and go far in GSL reliably and we all know that is close to impossible for new blood.
For example, getting into RO32 in GSL earns you ₩ 3,000,000 which is roughly 2 500 US dollars. Which means if you are "new blood" in korea and manage to get into RO32 but fail to make RO16 all three GSL seasons you income for the whole year would be 2 500 * 3 = 7 500 dollar.
New blood wont be able to get a team that pays a salary and since most of the viewers are outside of korea all the sponsors are outside of korea and korean players rarely get to play outside of korea. For koreans most ways to earn/win money or get sponsors are closed.
So, as the previous poster has already said. Is this what we want? Sure the foreign scene is improving but the korean is also declining, opportunities has become available for foreigners through closing off koreans opportunities.
any discussion about whether something is better or worse would be much less divisive and much more educational if we'd ask the opinions of people who actually play the challenger/tournaments to get into WCS and other global events.'
as it is, people just want to see the best games for themselves. some like the ultra competitiveness between the same foreigners. some like to be able to compare their foreign favourites against the other current and top players. the viewers and people who argue for region lock in its current state need to understand, that either the scene suddenly booms and we dump incredible viewers and money into the game, or this will be the upper limit of events we'll ever get. the initial bubble has bursted and we are stuck in short-term (yearly).
do they think it would be better or worse to lift the ban, and why? these are the people who play in wardiiitv games, who show up to challenger events, and practice with one another hoping to get through.
would it be okay for them to work incredibly hard to qualify for an event, to get knocked out by a korean legend? would it be okay for current pros to have more competition than they have been getting?
it is the player's risk to weigh whether they get to go to events on team salary/stipend versus attending less events and staying local.
but the most important thing ever is to think about where the future of the game goes. this is a simple decision but goes on to make a delicate situation.
personally, i want taeja, hero, and other such pros to come to foreign events as they are now. i want to see them play in an environment where they are no longer the best.
Why would removing region lock and not doing other things change anything? If anything they might make it worse.
Historically there was enough Korean depth that guys who weren’t at the absolute top end of the GSL competing for titles were still way above foreigners generally.
The GSL’s niche is that it’s the elite tournament in the historic home of Starcraft, with the highest level of play.
Let’s say that opening the doors and unlocking the region doesn’t see the Korean players of A/B tier get more opportunities, but instead we see a bunch of S class players approaching military callup move abroad.
You could end up with a devalued Code S if say Inno, Stats, other top guys with team backing move and play abroad (just random names), the league loses lustre and the players who suffer from region lock still don’t really have great opportunities because they lack the fan base and team backing of some of the guys who I would see as more like to prosper if region lock is gone.
The barrier to opportunity is not just region lock, but breaking through the Kespa guys and their stranglehold on Korean Starcraft as well, specifically those who had that training regime and connections. Even if some will say the level has slightly dropped, it’s still way too high for people to break through seemingly. Not particularly different from BW even in the current era players who weren’t in a Kespa team at some stage struggle to break that ceiling.
I’m not against removing region lock in and of itself, but without doing other things I don’t think it will accomplish what people think it will, and could introduce other problems too.
i don't understand your reasoning surrounding koreans moving abroad. they have to do it currently if they want to participate. they don't have to consider it at all if it is unlocked to all regions again.
moving abroad won't make it any easier to participate in WCS events, and it only dilutes GSL if they decide not to participate because of scheduling with other events, which is already often accounted for by TO's.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
On August 19 2019 23:36 nanaoei wrote: i don't understand your reasoning surrounding koreans moving abroad. they have to do it currently if they want to participate. they don't have to consider it at all if it is unlocked to all regions again.
moving abroad won't make it any easier to participate in WCS events, and it only dilutes GSL if they decide not to participate because of scheduling with other events, which is already often accounted for by TO's.
My point is that unlocking regions will just see the current Korean gatekeepers make more money in foreign tournaments, it’s not going to give opportunities to the guys below them, which is the rationale some people have in doing it.
The top of Korea is pretty fine, one bad tournament doesn’t really change that, it’s beneath that and the lack of new talent breaking through that is worse for the long term prospects of the scene.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
On August 19 2019 23:36 nanaoei wrote: i don't understand your reasoning surrounding koreans moving abroad. they have to do it currently if they want to participate. they don't have to consider it at all if it is unlocked to all regions again.
moving abroad won't make it any easier to participate in WCS events, and it only dilutes GSL if they decide not to participate because of scheduling with other events, which is already often accounted for by TO's.
My point is that unlocking regions will just see the current Korean gatekeepers make more money in foreign tournaments, it’s not going to give opportunities to the guys below them, which is the rationale some people have in doing it.
The top of Korea is pretty fine, one bad tournament doesn’t really change that, it’s beneath that and the lack of new talent breaking through that is worse for the long term prospects of the scene.
Apparently korean audience isn't really fond of Sc2 and there haven't been new prospect rising to a decent level in years, in korean's pro scene; I seriously doubt you can hope to revert this process right now.
On the other hand, western audience likes Sc2(and maybe the game is on the rise in China as well) and there is a good amount of promising young players; reuniting the scenes to welcome top koreans would be a threat to them, mostly. Given the good level foreigners are displaying at the moment, one can hope top koreans wouldn't strangle the prospects, let alone the whole foreign scene at it happened during HoTS.
I despise the "dead game" meme and I think Sc2 could go on for at least other 2-3 years as an esports, but we have to see what happens after the release of Wc3 reforged; WCS and GSL redisigned and merged into a global scene could be one interesting experiment.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
On August 20 2019 01:15 Waxangel wrote: there aren't any esports solutions to SC2's GENERAL popularity problems
Do you think there are any solutions at all or is the decline inevitable in your opinion?
I know the question wasn't aimed at me but I think you can never know what will become popular in the future. There is still time for SC2 to get a massive boost. If specific things are done to signal boost it or not, just look at how minecraft has exploded again after pewdiepie released new videon on the game. All of a sudden its popularity soared back to old heights.
Depending how tired players get of being fed the same mobas and royales and if someone exposes enough people to Starcraft 2 at the right time it could still happen. Not saying it will just that it could, you never know what the next big thing will be.
The foreigner scene is thriving no doubt, but Korean players are suffering because there's far less tournaments for them. If there are more non-blizzard-sponsored games for Koreans to play, there's no need to remove region lock anyway.
Edit: I mean non-blizzard-sponsored tournaments. The chinese team league is a good example.
On August 20 2019 11:08 AlexZhang1012 wrote: The foreigner scene is thriving no doubt, but Korean players are suffering because there's far less tournaments for them. If there are more non-blizzard-sponsored games for Koreans to play, there's no need to remove region lock anyway.
has Korea came up with any new RTS that they play outside of BW / SC2? That is the real question.. =P
On August 20 2019 11:08 AlexZhang1012 wrote: The foreigner scene is thriving no doubt, but Korean players are suffering because there's far less tournaments for them. If there are more non-blizzard-sponsored games for Koreans to play, there's no need to remove region lock anyway.
has Korea came up with any new RTS that they play outside of BW / SC2? That is the real question.. =P
maybe Koreans are getting better at other stuff and its costing them in Starcraft? Canada is producing more basketball players than ever before while producing fewer top notch hockey players than ever before.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
Well I’m hardly talking about now am I?
The present tense confused me... maybe you should avoid talking about the past as a reply to nowadays situation?
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
Well I’m hardly talking about now am I?
The present tense confused me... maybe you should avoid talking about the past as a reply to nowadays situation?
If any gap closing now is devalued due to ‘external influences’ and doesn’t count, then it’s entirely appropriate to examine the gap and why it existed before no?
On August 20 2019 01:15 Waxangel wrote: there aren't any esports solutions to SC2's GENERAL popularity problems
Do you think there are any solutions at all or is the decline inevitable in your opinion?
The rewiring of the human psyche?
Between the maturation of VoIP and how that dovetails well with team games, vs how it doesn’t especially well with a 1v1 where you have to focus hardcore, other games just are a more sociable experience that’s hard to compete with with a general gaming audience.
Starcraft’s still doing pretty well compared to other 1v1 games.
A lack of other RTS games and it generally not being a particularly prominent genre these days doesn’t help either. Some people who are drawn in that I’ve convinced haven’t played RTS at all, so it’s a pretty big hurdle to get ready for ladder, although they all enjoyed the campaigns.
Hopefully WarCraft reforged brings in some new blood from the MOBA world and WoW players who maybe haven’t tried RTS yet and may enjoy it.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
JinAir is the only one I can think of right now, but that doesn't mean all the Samsung, KT, or SKT veterans don't still have the benefit from the environment in which they learned to play the game.
The main difference is that with the death of proleague, those teams are gone, and the current (Korean) teams have no incentive to invest in young talents. There aren't enough online tournaments that offer chances to potential talents either, and the EU/US online tournaments have too much lag for Koreans to compete with peers who, without the team houses and their practice regimen and learning opportunities, are their equals.
As for the region lock: what should probably happen is for more weekenders to move to Korea, and the GSL preparation format branch out to include international stops (think: GSL season 1 in Korea, season 2 in the US and season 3 in Europe somewhere). That way you can stay in Korea and have equal opportunities to win big WCS events. Or you can travel with the GSL tour and try to qualify for Blizzcon in only preparation style tournaments. And you can do the same if you live in Europe or the Americas.
But a restructuring like that requires a huge investment by someone (probably Blizzard) that is simply not going to happen. And that leaves the region lock as the only somewhat fair system: you want to compete in GSL? You basically have to live in Korea. So on the flipside: you want to compete in the WCS Circuit? You have to live elsewhere.
And I agree it is not fair that Scarlett and Special can do both. But it is a pretty unusual situation.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
JinAir is the only one I can think of right now, but that doesn't mean all the Samsung, KT, or SKT veterans don't still have the benefit from the environment in which they learned to play the game.
The main difference is that with the death of proleague, those teams are gone, and the current (Korean) teams have no incentive to invest in young talents. There aren't enough online tournaments that offer chances to potential talents either, and the EU/US online tournaments have too much lag for Koreans to compete with peers who, without the team houses and their practice regimen and learning opportunities, are their equals.
As for the region lock: what should probably happen is for more weekenders to move to Korea, and the GSL preparation format branch out to include international stops (think: GSL season 1 in Korea, season 2 in the US and season 3 in Europe somewhere). That way you can stay in Korea and have equal opportunities to win big WCS events. Or you can travel with the GSL tour and try to qualify for Blizzcon in only preparation style tournaments. And you can do the same if you live in Europe or the Americas.
But a restructuring like that requires a huge investment by someone (probably Blizzard) that is simply not going to happen. And that leaves the region lock as the only somewhat fair system: you want to compete in GSL? You basically have to live in Korea. So on the flipside: you want to compete in the WCS Circuit? You have to live elsewhere.
And I agree it is not fair that Scarlett and Special can do both. But it is a pretty unusual situation.
I like some of these ideas for sure.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I wonder how the scene would look if some of the current structures had been implemented way earlier.
The WCS Circuit works pretty damn well in its current form unfortunately it really came into its modern form when Korea had the Kespa pullout etc.
It feels to me that we’ve at some point had all the pieces needed for the optimal calendar puzzle, but never at the same time alas. A hypothetical Starcraft timeline when you have frequent weekenders, GSL, another StarLeague, Proleague with its team-based and prep based format, WCS circuit and Katowice and Blizzcon as the big prestige weekenders.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
JinAir is the only one I can think of right now, but that doesn't mean all the Samsung, KT, or SKT veterans don't still have the benefit from the environment in which they learned to play the game.
The main difference is that with the death of proleague, those teams are gone, and the current (Korean) teams have no incentive to invest in young talents. There aren't enough online tournaments that offer chances to potential talents either, and the EU/US online tournaments have too much lag for Koreans to compete with peers who, without the team houses and their practice regimen and learning opportunities, are their equals.
As for the region lock: what should probably happen is for more weekenders to move to Korea, and the GSL preparation format branch out to include international stops (think: GSL season 1 in Korea, season 2 in the US and season 3 in Europe somewhere). That way you can stay in Korea and have equal opportunities to win big WCS events. Or you can travel with the GSL tour and try to qualify for Blizzcon in only preparation style tournaments. And you can do the same if you live in Europe or the Americas.
But a restructuring like that requires a huge investment by someone (probably Blizzard) that is simply not going to happen. And that leaves the region lock as the only somewhat fair system: you want to compete in GSL? You basically have to live in Korea. So on the flipside: you want to compete in the WCS Circuit? You have to live elsewhere.
And I agree it is not fair that Scarlett and Special can do both. But it is a pretty unusual situation.
But that was the point of the original post Wombat(I beieve) reacted to. There's not enough incentinve in Korea alone as most tourneys are targeted at the pro level while Korea is very dense in terms of skill in comparison to WCS.
The issue with the region lock was shown pretty well when there was a decision - if you go for your Code S RO32 group you're not allowed to play at WCS because you have to live there a month prior the match... this doesn't affect foreigners who can technically fly in and out. Which doesn't help either.
On August 18 2019 16:32 SC-Shield wrote: The gap hasn't closed. It's a consequence of events: - KeSPA abandoned StarCraft scene - Korean pro teams disbanded - region lock / less tournaments for Koreans
Over time effects of these are beginning to show. When you weaken something, it doesn't mean "the gap has closed". It means level has gone down.
What? The level going down is what causes the gap to close lol...
When people say "the gap has closed" they mean Koreans and foreigners are equally good. No, they're not. Koreans lack the environment to play more seriously so level is going down. What I call "closing the gap" is when foreigners and Koreans are able to reach their peak without external influences (region lock, etc).
Having Korean corporations sponsoring full time team houses in a quite centralised country, with a league that requires you to stay in a country that is quite difficult for many foreigners culturally isn’t external?
What Korean corportaions sponsor full time team houses? Name 2 or more(better to name more than 2). I'll await the names of the corporations eagerly.
JinAir is the only one I can think of right now, but that doesn't mean all the Samsung, KT, or SKT veterans don't still have the benefit from the environment in which they learned to play the game.
The main difference is that with the death of proleague, those teams are gone, and the current (Korean) teams have no incentive to invest in young talents. There aren't enough online tournaments that offer chances to potential talents either, and the EU/US online tournaments have too much lag for Koreans to compete with peers who, without the team houses and their practice regimen and learning opportunities, are their equals.
As for the region lock: what should probably happen is for more weekenders to move to Korea, and the GSL preparation format branch out to include international stops (think: GSL season 1 in Korea, season 2 in the US and season 3 in Europe somewhere). That way you can stay in Korea and have equal opportunities to win big WCS events. Or you can travel with the GSL tour and try to qualify for Blizzcon in only preparation style tournaments. And you can do the same if you live in Europe or the Americas.
But a restructuring like that requires a huge investment by someone (probably Blizzard) that is simply not going to happen. And that leaves the region lock as the only somewhat fair system: you want to compete in GSL? You basically have to live in Korea. So on the flipside: you want to compete in the WCS Circuit? You have to live elsewhere.
And I agree it is not fair that Scarlett and Special can do both. But it is a pretty unusual situation.
But that was the point of the original post Wombat(I beieve) reacted to. There's not enough incentinve in Korea alone as most tourneys are targeted at the pro level while Korea is very dense in terms of skill in comparison to WCS.
The issue with the region lock was shown pretty well when there was a decision - if you go for your Code S RO32 group you're not allowed to play at WCS because you have to live there a month prior the match... this doesn't affect foreigners who can technically fly in and out. Which doesn't help either.
Well his point read like any closing of the gap doesn’t count because Koreans don’t have their optimal environment, my response was merely pointing out the foreign scene has never really had that model either.
There are two separate things here, top Koreans vs top foreigners, which is generally where we see them face off, and not top Koreans and how they’re doing. Be that basically non-existent new talent, military returnees, or Code S gatekeepers.
If there is a decline in the S class Korean players, it’s not a giant fall, relatively marginal. If we were to rewind and look at foreigner games from years ago vs now there’s a marked improvement. Foreigners were visibly worse mechanically in a way that’s not nearly as pronounced now.
The WCS Circuit has helped a lot in that regard, there’s a clear trajectory for talented ladder heroes to start qualifying, keep working and run deep and ultimately win tournaments. I’m not sure that we see some of this new talent remaining full time if the gatekeepers to progression are facing the best Koreans in the world from the start of your pro career.
While veterans do post solid results too, in foreign land it is mostly younger players who are surpassing what came before them in this environment and moving beyond that, which is basically the exact opposite to what we have in Korea.
I don’t think removing region lock at this stage will even help all that much, perhaps alternate solutions are worth exploring. More Korean tournaments with decent prize money for low placing players to give them something to work with and build from. Perhaps have another Katowice style tournament actually in Korea too, it’s difficult to justify flying to try and qualify at the event in Europe if you’re not already an established top player with backing.
As I see it removing region lock and the existing S class Koreans will still clean up in qualifiers etc, but also I’m not sure peripheral Koreans can compete with good foreigners either. Plus guys on the periphery lack team backing doesn’t help either.
gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
Compare viewership to the foreign scene? Yes GSL is quite low (don't use time zone as an excuse)
Even in most TL tournament thread these are less comments in a GSL thread than a WCS thread.
Most of the "korean elitist" have no clue how a business work or any money management skills,
Removing region lock will not improve the Korean scene at all. Whether you like it or not, a foreigner playing in GSL creates a buzz and increases viewership/interest. Is it double standard? Yes, but that's how the real world works.
If the "korean elitists" really want to argue about removing region lock. Please go educate yourself first and read a very great High IQ post regarding this topic posted by Liquid NonY back in (2018 or 2017?) He went in depth explaining a lot of things related.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
You say that and yet Ragnarok had the best result in his career at IEM Katowice and the year before Hurricane had an impressive run. Lifting regionlock wouldn't only benefit the top koreans
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
Yes but what will reverting it do to address that? There are other things that would help more but they seem extremely unlikely in the current climate, Blizz having killed HotS already.
Years ago in the earlier WCS iterations if they’d been more soft region locked and Koreans had to actually base themselves longer in Europe and NA, like foreigners in GSL then they might have raised the level of those regions by their consistent presence in ladder, plus would be a way to closer mesh the scenes and give cool cultural experiences to those willing to do so.
If foreigners had had a circuit where they could not just compete with Koreans, but practice with them in the scene regularly that was my personal preference at the time, it didn’t really work out that way though.
That was a big missed opportunity in a time where Korea did have the depth to send a bunch of players outside of Korea and into foreign land in such a fashion, depth that simply isn’t there any more.
Today’s Bomber is not the vintage Bomber, the equivalents of Armani and other Code S gatekeepers 5 years ago were better than the vast majority of foreigners in a way that isn’t the case now.
WCS is a great model in most ways for eSports in general in my view, at least for Europe. You don’t need to travel necessarily to qualify, travel is paid if you do it online so you don’t need a team, there are spots for ladder qualification which incentivises good quality players to actually ladder and the prize pool isn’t insanely top heavy either. Plus you can try your luck in the open bracket if you want too.
One of the chief benefits eSports have is a very low bar to entry, get a rig and get playing online, theoretically. WCS as a system now, Korean issue aside is fantastically well set up for a European player base that has talent spread all across the continent.
I wish it had been set up sooner in something like its modern form, it’s a good setup for the foreign playerbase, although a bit more so.
Conversely the Kespa/eSF setup was ideal for the Korean scene, obviously one country, not a particularly big country and pretty centralised around Seoul, sharing one language and culture and obviously it’s easier to have team houses and team leagues when you’re based in one place.
We’ve got a system that works pretty well for foreign factors, we had one that worked well for Korean circumstances, the big challenge is finding a replacement for what Korea have lost in some way, which definitely looks a difficult nut to crack.
maybe Afreeca should shut down GSL vs The World and invest that money to actual GSL so that the Korean can make the living. It's stupid that all the foreigners, who already having plenty of money in WCS, also have chance to compete in Korea while Korean cannot play in WCS.
On August 22 2019 00:49 parksonsc wrote: maybe Afreeca should shut down GSL vs The World and invest that money to actual GSL so that the Korean can make the living. It's stupid that all the foreigners, who already having plenty of money in WCS, also have chance to compete in Korea while Korean cannot play in WCS.
At the end of the day Afeeca is a business, they want the highest viewer numbers. We all know that foreigners competing in events like GSL V.S. the world bring the bigger numbers than regular GSL. Keep in mind the numbers are slipping every year, I'm guessing Afeeca does not have the same budget and leeway they had before.
On August 22 2019 02:16 xelnaga_empire wrote: I'm for region locking the GSL and WCS. No foreigners allowed in the GSL and no Koreans allowed in WCS. Seems fair to me.
It would suck for NoRegret and the other foreigners training in Korea though. But it's fair to both sides.
I dont like this approach that something is unfair (or negative) for 1 side, so lets make is unfair (negative) for both sides...
This region lock should be just cancelled. It has served its purpose, Korea scene declined and the level of play got closer. Just let those who would still want to travel and play do that... no harm in it
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 04:27 NbaLover wrote:
On August 21 2019 03:05 Musicus wrote:
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
Compare viewership to the foreign scene? Yes GSL is quite low (don't use time zone as an excuse)
Even in most TL tournament thread these are less comments in a GSL thread than a WCS thread.
Most of the "korean elitist" have no clue how a business work or any money management skills,
Removing region lock will not improve the Korean scene at all. Whether you like it or not, a foreigner playing in GSL creates a buzz and increases viewership/interest. Is it double standard? Yes, but that's how the real world works.
If the "korean elitists" really want to argue about removing region lock. Please go educate yourself first and read a very great High IQ post regarding this topic posted by Liquid NonY back in (2018 or 2017?) He went in depth explaining a lot of things related.
You mean the foreign English casting channel? Do you have the numbers of Afreeca Korean TV broadcast? Because, sure, let's compare a foreigner tournament in the prime time vs Korean tournament so off the prime time it's not even funny. European viewers have to watch it at work and 'Murricans have to get up early. And yet those numbers aren't down.
But let's return to the viewership. Do. You. Have. The. Numbers? Since you are the one arguing with them, you better have them.
I'm not gonna educate myself from Nony, as Nony isn't the almighty alknowing god and my longterm point is to region lock Korea, so, uh... because who of the Koreans will nowadays travel abroad if they cancel the region lock? Who has the money? How many of them can travel abroad and risk it? They're no longer on rich teams and it's no longer a sure bet for money...
On August 22 2019 02:16 xelnaga_empire wrote: I'm for region locking the GSL and WCS. No foreigners allowed in the GSL and no Koreans allowed in WCS. Seems fair to me.
It would suck for NoRegret and the other foreigners training in Korea though. But it's fair to both sides.
I dont like this approach that something is unfair (or negative) for 1 side, so lets make is unfair (negative) for both sides...
This region lock should be just cancelled. It has served its purpose, Korea scene declined and the level of play got closer. Just let those who would still want to travel and play do that... no harm in it
I agree, the region lock in my opinion will only end up diminishing the skill levels of all players at the end of the day.
On August 22 2019 00:49 parksonsc wrote: maybe Afreeca should shut down GSL vs The World and invest that money to actual GSL so that the Korean can make the living. It's stupid that all the foreigners, who already having plenty of money in WCS, also have chance to compete in Korea while Korean cannot play in WCS.
At the end of the day Afeeca is a business, they want the highest viewer numbers. We all know that foreigners competing in events like GSL V.S. the world bring the bigger numbers than regular GSL. Keep in mind the numbers are slipping every year, I'm guessing Afeeca does not have the same budget and leeway they had before.
i'm going to talk out my ass and say afreeca is not getting viewership for GSL. there are many legit reasons why they're broadcasting on twitch primarily and don't expect anything on their own platform. not getting viewership compared to say their LoL team, ASL, or other games (overwatch etc.) out there that are niche to starcraft fans. the viewership is there--you can see that their GSL videos on youtube are getting hits in the tens of thousands thanks to foreign fans. but what really makes them money as they are their own sponsors?
that is the real question. what is supporting the salaries of the translator, tastosis and the backstage staff? well, it's easy to see that blizzard could have a hand, and that is enough for them. they are not making money for selling eyeballs. they are promised less of a loss when blizzard steps in and contributes monetarily to the effort to keep the tournaments running in the mecha location of esports and the origin point of starcraft.
i want to see it all grow, but we're talking tens of thousands of people spending a sizable amount of money on something afreeca (and other potential TO's like homestory) can market. homestory cup actually has sponsorship and they struggle to keep afloat even with the prestige and loyal fandom.
if you want the scene to grow and attract people, you need people to begin with. you need people who spend money haphazardly and players who log in and don't have to think about whether they want to actually play or not. you need updates that shake the game up and slowly change the way people experience the game for the better, so those players keep coming back and keep spending on the product. DotA 2 is able to have a 33 million dollar battle pass because it is building on a formula that sports gambling and spending on digital goods for ten million different players. the scope is not even close and yet they're similar games. the battle pass introduces more cosmetics in batches, which is what sc2 is now doing with their warchest for loyal fans.
the playerbase portion is frankly not what sc2 has anymore. it never had the frivolous spending part of it in the first place. it was there when the game first released. there was this huge bubble and has popped ever since. Gomtv's GSL was not sustainable, and they had to sell to afreeca who has way more income lining their pockets to afford a fraction of the cost of today's GSL.
it would take a massive effort to turn things around for any region and we should already feel blessed that the foreign scene saw new players with rising stars, and some more global popularity.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 04:27 NbaLover wrote:
On August 21 2019 03:05 Musicus wrote:
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
Compare viewership to the foreign scene? Yes GSL is quite low (don't use time zone as an excuse)
Even in most TL tournament thread these are less comments in a GSL thread than a WCS thread.
Most of the "korean elitist" have no clue how a business work or any money management skills,
Removing region lock will not improve the Korean scene at all. Whether you like it or not, a foreigner playing in GSL creates a buzz and increases viewership/interest. Is it double standard? Yes, but that's how the real world works.
If the "korean elitists" really want to argue about removing region lock. Please go educate yourself first and read a very great High IQ post regarding this topic posted by Liquid NonY back in (2018 or 2017?) He went in depth explaining a lot of things related.
You mean the foreign English casting channel? Do you have the numbers of Afreeca Korean TV broadcast? Because, sure, let's compare a foreigner tournament in the prime time vs Korean tournament so off the prime time it's not even funny. European viewers have to watch it at work and 'Murricans have to get up early. And yet those numbers aren't down.
But let's return to the viewership. Do. You. Have. The. Numbers? Since you are the one arguing with them, you better have them.
I'm not gonna educate myself from Nony, as Nony isn't the almighty alknowing god and my longterm point is to region lock Korea, so, uh... because who of the Koreans will nowadays travel abroad if they cancel the region lock? Who has the money? How many of them can travel abroad and risk it? They're no longer on rich teams and it's no longer a sure bet for money...
Ya the viewership number is lower than foreign scene period and fact. If you want the exact number go do your own research boy.
Like i said don't use time zone as an excuse. Since you claim the viewership in Korea is so high, so with your logic why is the korean scene dying? If you claim it has such a high viewership? seriously gtfo with that nonsense.
You don't want to educate yourself? Sure keep staying in denial and believe blizzard/foreign are killing "Korean sc2 scene". Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Oh geez I wonder why these korean cant travel abroad? It couldn't be there no teams/sponsors that want to support sc2 in korea because it just isn't a popular e-sport anymore. Don't want the risk due to the constant matchfixing scandal in sc2.
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
If the region lock is so awesome, region lock Korea then? To help the Korean scene, or do we care only for the foreigners and let Korea die? From my view it's the latter and I don't like it at all.
On August 21 2019 04:27 NbaLover wrote:
On August 21 2019 03:05 Musicus wrote:
On August 21 2019 02:44 fishjie wrote: gap closed cause region lock killed korean scene. there are no new up and coming korean players, once the current batch of gsl code s players retires for military it is all over. the end. RIP
What difference does it make for an up and coming player if Stats, Dark, Maru, TY and 4 other top Koreans fly out to a WCS event 4 times a year?
I would love to see region lock removed, so we get to see more cool games, but it would do nothing to help the Korean scene.
It would not result in more people playing or watching sc2 in Korea and it wouldn't bring back Kespa teams or Proleague either. The korean scene is declining, because there is almost no interest in sc2 in Korea. Of course the matchfixing stuff back then didn't help.
High IQ post
Korean scene is dying because SC2 is just not a popular game in Korea for potential new talents. Simple as that
Also I don't feel sorry for the Korean scene anyways. They screwed it up for themselves with that that matchfixing nonsense.
But the "korean elitist" will blame it on region lock, unfair opportunities, blizzard being racist, etc. Those people are in total denial and delusional.
So that's why the studios are empty and no one watches GSL... oh, wait, no, that's not happening.
It's insanely hard to make a living out of SC2 in Korea because you have to fight not only the Koreans, you have to fight the foreigners too. The same damn reason why region lock was created for foreigners. Again, if the region lock works, region lock Korea, screw foreginer house.
Compare viewership to the foreign scene? Yes GSL is quite low (don't use time zone as an excuse)
Even in most TL tournament thread these are less comments in a GSL thread than a WCS thread.
Most of the "korean elitist" have no clue how a business work or any money management skills,
Removing region lock will not improve the Korean scene at all. Whether you like it or not, a foreigner playing in GSL creates a buzz and increases viewership/interest. Is it double standard? Yes, but that's how the real world works.
If the "korean elitists" really want to argue about removing region lock. Please go educate yourself first and read a very great High IQ post regarding this topic posted by Liquid NonY back in (2018 or 2017?) He went in depth explaining a lot of things related.
You mean the foreign English casting channel? Do you have the numbers of Afreeca Korean TV broadcast? Because, sure, let's compare a foreigner tournament in the prime time vs Korean tournament so off the prime time it's not even funny. European viewers have to watch it at work and 'Murricans have to get up early. And yet those numbers aren't down.
But let's return to the viewership. Do. You. Have. The. Numbers? Since you are the one arguing with them, you better have them.
I'm not gonna educate myself from Nony, as Nony isn't the almighty alknowing god and my longterm point is to region lock Korea, so, uh... because who of the Koreans will nowadays travel abroad if they cancel the region lock? Who has the money? How many of them can travel abroad and risk it? They're no longer on rich teams and it's no longer a sure bet for money...
Ya the viewership number is lower than foreign scene period and fact. If you want the exact number go do your own research boy.
Like i said don't use time zone as an excuse. Since you claim the viewership in Korea is so high, so with your logic why is the korean scene dying? If you claim it has such a high viewership? seriously gtfo with that nonsense.
You don't want to educate yourself? Sure keep staying in denial and believe blizzard/foreign are killing "Korean sc2 scene". Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Oh geez I wonder why these korean cant travel abroad? It couldn't be there no teams/sponsors that want to support sc2 in korea because it just isn't a popular e-sport anymore. Don't want the risk due to the constant matchfixing scandal in sc2.
Korean killed the korean scene themselves.
I didn't say it's high, if anything I said in the past it's stable. It was down for a while and it grew back, the interest is there, it's just very hard to make living out of SC2 because of the income issues. It was mentioned gazillion times already. You need to get over Koreans AND foreigners into Code S on a stable basis. That's not an easy feat to do.
Edit> So you have nothing, you just compare foreign viewership and that's it for a Korean league. That's like saying - hey, Czech viewership of the Bundesliga is falling down therefore the Bundesliga is in a dire state(while it's the German League for Germans).
Edit2> if you want me to read somthing, you know what you can do? Link it. That was a small jab but you didn't get it. I'm not gonna find some post from someone which I don't object against as I am using a simple logic - if region lock works for foreigners then region lock Korea and move foreigners away.
I haven't read any of this thread but to me it's pretty simple why there are no new koreans popping up and europe has slowly got stronger
The region lock has slowly allowed europeans/americans to build on each others skill and get better and better, events like challenger act as a lower league which allows good players to get experience which then allows them to become great players. It also allows lower players to get paid to enable them to keep playing (remember this is peoples jobs) Serral would not be where he is now without experience, and if there was no region lock and he got stomped by the best players in the world at that time he would gain less experience as he would be knocked out sooner.
the korean scene (GSL) is actively HARMING their scene because of the design of GSL. There is no paid qualifier (like an old code A) so even if your good enough to play in the qualifier you still don't get a reward until GSL. In essence this means there is no lower league.. straight to the top tier without any financial backing or reward. That's insanely hard.
THEN when you do qualify because of the shitty 2 picks for the seed 1 player system, Maru picks you first for his group and you get bumped out 2-0 in the first group stage, that doesn't really give you much experience or stage time to improve. Something where like the top Code A player would play vs the 16th seed would give them more of a chance. I do see players in the korean scene like Armani who have a chance but the GSL set up makes it SO hard for them.
when region lock wasn't a thing lesser South korean players would use WCS as a training ground as there is no training ground in korea and since their base level used to be higher it was stompy and made it harder for non koreans to compete. The problem is that there is no training ground for south koreans. It's GSL or... ? Olimoleague?
of course. Is it possible for TIME to beat soO 3-0 two or three years ago? But he do it now. I think there are two reasons. first, Korean players are lazy now, as I know, they will not practise a lot if there is no big tournament to play. Then foreigners become stronger these years. Serral is fantastic, he can beat anyone. but you shouldnt ignore the improvement of other players such as Elazer, TIME and SpeCial.
On August 23 2019 18:55 La1 wrote: I haven't read any of this thread but to me it's pretty simple why there are no new koreans popping up and europe has slowly got stronger
The region lock has slowly allowed europeans/americans to build on each others skill and get better and better, events like challenger act as a lower league which allows good players to get experience which then allows them to become great players. It also allows lower players to get paid to enable them to keep playing (remember this is peoples jobs) Serral would not be where he is now without experience, and if there was no region lock and he got stomped by the best players in the world at that time he would gain less experience as he would be knocked out sooner.
the korean scene (GSL) is actively HARMING their scene because of the design of GSL. There is no paid qualifier (like an old code A) so even if your good enough to play in the qualifier you still don't get a reward until GSL. In essence this means there is no lower league.. straight to the top tier without any financial backing or reward. That's insanely hard.
THEN when you do qualify because of the shitty 2 picks for the seed 1 player system, Maru picks you first for his group and you get bumped out 2-0 in the first group stage, that doesn't really give you much experience or stage time to improve. Something where like the top Code A player would play vs the 16th seed would give them more of a chance. I do see players in the korean scene like Armani who have a chance but the GSL set up makes it SO hard for them.
when region lock wasn't a thing lesser South korean players would use WCS as a training ground as there is no training ground in korea and since their base level used to be higher it was stompy and made it harder for non koreans to compete. The problem is that there is no training ground for south koreans. It's GSL or... ? Olimoleague?
I don’t buy this at all.
Neebs peak was when he was practicing like a madman in Korea. We are talking about a foreigner winning a kespa cup something even serral hasn’t accomplished.
When Neeb decided to just farm WCS events for cash his play took a dive.
TIME is rising fast - and where does he practice a lot? With Koreans server.
Special became better after training in Korea, good friends with TY etc.
Even Reynor has gsl experience.
Of course there is Scarlett too
What we see here is that the majority of the top foreigners are or have been very active in the Korean scene.
The problem for Koreans is that there is nowhere for new talent to prosper since the Korean old guard dominates the scene. Koreans should be allowed to easily participate in WCS.
Edit : disregard my post. I’m drunk and misread your post
assuming sc2 keeps going next year which i hope it does. opening the floadgates letting all koreans compete in every WCS would have been totally fair if non koreans would not have to live in korea for competing in gsl. but koreans not being allowed to compete in WCS is also unfair.
currently the system is more unfair for koreans than foreigners by far.
just a wild suggestion, would letting every GSL player compete in 1 single WCS each a year be a idea? + letting the koreans that are not good enough to get into the GSL be allowed to compete in WCS be a idea? cause if some korean that cant even get into the GSL cant compete in WCS it is totally unfair. since its GSL or nothing.
On August 24 2019 03:04 Balkow wrote: assuming sc2 keeps going next year which i hope it does. opening the floadgates letting all koreans compete in every WCS would have been totally fair if non koreans would not have to live in korea for competing in gsl. but koreans not being allowed to compete in WCS is also unfair.
currently the system is more unfair for koreans than foreigners by far.
just a wild suggestion, would letting every GSL player compete in 1 single WCS each a year be a idea? + letting the koreans that are not good enough to get into the GSL be allowed to compete in WCS be a idea? cause if some korean that cant even get into the GSL cant compete in WCS it is totally unfair. since its GSL or nothing.
Yes and no. For some, they might get money and experience that they otherwise would not have got. However, and this has been a problem for the last few years when people talking about unlocking the region, the only players would would benefit would be those who already don't need help.
The people would would make it far in the GSL would be the ones who make it far in WCS. We're long past the point where being in Code A (qualifiers at this point) guarantees you any success in WCS. If you struggle to get into the GSL, you're going to struggle to make it in the playoffs of WCS.
Quite honestly, players like Speed, Trust, Losira, or even TRUE, wouldn't really do all that well in WCS. They might get ro24 maybe, but I really don't think they'd get any further than ro16.
On August 24 2019 03:04 Balkow wrote: assuming sc2 keeps going next year which i hope it does. opening the floadgates letting all koreans compete in every WCS would have been totally fair if non koreans would not have to live in korea for competing in gsl. but koreans not being allowed to compete in WCS is also unfair.
currently the system is more unfair for koreans than foreigners by far.
just a wild suggestion, would letting every GSL player compete in 1 single WCS each a year be a idea? + letting the koreans that are not good enough to get into the GSL be allowed to compete in WCS be a idea? cause if some korean that cant even get into the GSL cant compete in WCS it is totally unfair. since its GSL or nothing.
Yes and no. For some, they might get money and experience that they otherwise would not have got. However, and this has been a problem for the last few years when people talking about unlocking the region, the only players would would benefit would be those who already don't need help.
The people would would make it far in the GSL would be the ones who make it far in WCS. We're long past the point where being in Code A (qualifiers at this point) guarantees you any success in WCS. If you struggle to get into the GSL, you're going to struggle to make it in the playoffs of WCS.
Quite honestly, players like Speed, Trust, Losira, or even TRUE, wouldn't really do all that well in WCS. They might get ro24 maybe, but I really don't think they'd get any further than ro16.
Essentially this, and why I don’t think unlocking the regions would help the people who need the help.
Just looking at games I’ve seen this year, I really don’t fancy the chances of guys in that bracket if they did play in WCS.
I think by and large most accept Serral’s level as legit, depending on bias to Korea/foreign land that the Neeb/Scarlett/Special/Neeb etc bracket are also on a level above some of the current Code S gatekeepers. Some I think underrate the guys like Showtime because he hasn’t spent much time in Korea, or a guy like Heromarine who hasn’t.
There’s a whole bunch of guys who are slightly below that level, or improving up to it that maybe peripheral Koreans can absolute best in a series, but beating a whole load of them in a row at a tournament, and hoping to avoid the S class foreigners just seems incredibly unlikely to me.
[/QUOTE] Yes and no. For some, they might get money and experience that they otherwise would not have got. However, and this has been a problem for the last few years when people talking about unlocking the region, the only players would would benefit would be those who already don't need help.
The people would would make it far in the GSL would be the ones who make it far in WCS. We're long past the point where being in Code A (qualifiers at this point) guarantees you any success in WCS. If you struggle to get into the GSL, you're going to struggle to make it in the playoffs of WCS.
Quite honestly, players like Speed, Trust, Losira, or even TRUE, wouldn't really do all that well in WCS. They might get ro24 maybe, but I really don't think they'd get any further than ro16. [/QUOTE]
thanks for the reply, i really wonder if they could make a system were the bad koreans still could compete in WCS. some sort of softlock. if you fell in RO32 of gsl, you can compete in WCS. but if you made it to RO16 you cant. if you did not make it into GSL you can compete in WCS. i really hope for some softlock and not a pure region lock for korea. the fact that we almost always get ZVZ finals in WCS does not make things better.
Yes and no. For some, they might get money and experience that they otherwise would not have got. However, and this has been a problem for the last few years when people talking about unlocking the region, the only players would would benefit would be those who already don't need help.
The people would would make it far in the GSL would be the ones who make it far in WCS. We're long past the point where being in Code A (qualifiers at this point) guarantees you any success in WCS. If you struggle to get into the GSL, you're going to struggle to make it in the playoffs of WCS.
Quite honestly, players like Speed, Trust, Losira, or even TRUE, wouldn't really do all that well in WCS. They might get ro24 maybe, but I really don't think they'd get any further than ro16.
thanks for the reply, i really wonder if they could make a system were the bad koreans still could compete in WCS. some sort of softlock. if you fell in RO32 of gsl, you can compete in WCS. but if you made it to RO16 you cant. if you did not make it into GSL you can compete in WCS. i really hope for some softlock and not a pure region lock for korea. the fact that we almost always get ZVZ finals in WCS does not make things better.
I’ve pondered this myself, I’d actually thought maybe the best environment for that would be the non-Code S Koreans and the Chinese players having some kind of additional Asian WCS tournament circuit.
I think it would tick a few boxes, both non-top Koreans and the Chinese outside of TIME lag a bit behind top foreigners, travel and time zones wouldn’t be quite as bad for an Asian tournament. China is really the country you could say has seen growth in interest and also has a lot of untapped potential.
Yes and no. For some, they might get money and experience that they otherwise would not have got. However, and this has been a problem for the last few years when people talking about unlocking the region, the only players would would benefit would be those who already don't need help.
The people would would make it far in the GSL would be the ones who make it far in WCS. We're long past the point where being in Code A (qualifiers at this point) guarantees you any success in WCS. If you struggle to get into the GSL, you're going to struggle to make it in the playoffs of WCS.
Quite honestly, players like Speed, Trust, Losira, or even TRUE, wouldn't really do all that well in WCS. They might get ro24 maybe, but I really don't think they'd get any further than ro16.
thanks for the reply, i really wonder if they could make a system were the bad koreans still could compete in WCS. some sort of softlock. if you fell in RO32 of gsl, you can compete in WCS. but if you made it to RO16 you cant. if you did not make it into GSL you can compete in WCS. i really hope for some softlock and not a pure region lock for korea. the fact that we almost always get ZVZ finals in WCS does not make things better.
I’ve pondered this myself, I’d actually thought maybe the best environment for that would be the non-Code S Koreans and the Chinese players having some kind of additional Asian WCS tournament circuit.
I think it would tick a few boxes, both non-top Koreans and the Chinese outside of TIME lag a bit behind top foreigners, travel and time zones wouldn’t be quite as bad for an Asian tournament. China is really the country you could say has seen growth in interest and also has a lot of untapped potential.
I really liked the idea but someone said something that I felt was valid criticism. For some players who have low chance of getting past the ro32, they may lack motivation to win or worse, may even kind of want to lose. While I do believe the Korean players have enough pride that they would try their best to make ro16 regardless of there being some incentive from losing, it's possible that it becomes a problem. Maybe a solution is to change the distribution of the GSL prize pool by making it larger in the ro16 and allot more WCS points in the ro16 (or just any way to discourage not taking the ro32 seriously).
honestly i hope they open the floadgates next year. watching serral vs stats was much more enjoyable than watching another ZVZ final! since koreans got good terrans and good protoss, while foreigners only got god lvl zergs, id say lets mix it up.
On August 24 2019 13:10 Balkow wrote: honestly i hope they open the floadgates next year. watching serral vs stats was much more enjoyable than watching another ZVZ final! since koreans got good terrans and good protoss, while foreigners only got god lvl zergs, id say lets mix it up.
They should open region lock, but there are good protosses and terrans as well outside of South-Korea, it's not only ZvZ. 3/4 WCS finals in 2018 was Serral against protoss.
On August 24 2019 13:10 Balkow wrote: honestly i hope they open the floadgates next year. watching serral vs stats was much more enjoyable than watching another ZVZ final! since koreans got good terrans and good protoss, while foreigners only got god lvl zergs, id say lets mix it up.
Unless WCS pays the flight cost I doubt it will be a "flood". WE just saw how many of them went into ROG
On August 24 2019 13:10 Balkow wrote: honestly i hope they open the floadgates next year. watching serral vs stats was much more enjoyable than watching another ZVZ final! since koreans got good terrans and good protoss, while foreigners only got god lvl zergs, id say lets mix it up.
Unless WCS pays the flight cost I doubt it will be a "flood". WE just saw how many of them went into ROG
Many, indeed; 12/32 for one event in Finland not covering travel expenses and not assigning any WCS point.
when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
If say we take such a large sample size of 100/100 I might actually give koreans alot less chance then I would before, there are alot of skilled foreigners and alot less koreans who are top notch anymore, it's kinda crazy but they might not have the numbers anymore lol
With the region lock still on, we won't be seeing any new talents coming from Korea. Gsl is still way more competitive than the Wcs circuit and this would be a discouraging factor to aspiring Korean Starcraft 2 players. Serral already proved that Non Koreans do not necessarily need to play in Korea to be the best so all this region lock thing is doing now is strangling the Korean scene...
Korean Terrans are also far better than the rest of the non Koreans and so far, there has not been a dominant Non Korean Terran in the Wcs circuit scene. Zerg has Serral, Reynor and a few rising talents, Protoss has Neeb and Showtime but what about Terran? TIME? Special? Sorry but they are still not in the league of the 4 top Korean Terrans. If this region lock continues, we probably won't be seeing a Non Korean Terran win a wcs circuit for awhile. Even if the Koreans are dominant, pros can adapt to their play style and improve which is better than entirely avoiding them and not getting any exposure.
Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So I just pointed out you claim the Korean SC2 viewership is dead. And I ask you for the source for such claim. You responded with a personal attack no sources.
I didn't claim the SC2 audience is bigger than LoL or other of the big games, why would I do that? I just asked for the source of what I just bolded in your text.
Edit> Also "most old Pros quit for BW" is interesting claim either but I'm too lazy to go into numbers.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So I just pointed out you claim the Korean SC2 viewership is dead. And I ask you for the source for such claim. You responded with a personal attack no sources.
I didn't claim the SC2 audience is bigger than LoL or other of the big games, why would I do that? I just asked for the source of what I just bolded in your text.
Edit> Also "most old Pros quit for BW" is interesting claim either but I'm too lazy to go into numbers.
I know Rain, ByuL, Sacsri and Soulkey all moved on to BW after retiring in SC2. HerO also played BW for a short while I think (I believe he returned to SC2 though). If you look at the ASL Qualifiers, there are many other SC2 players who have played in them.
I've thought about the lost talent from the past few years and for top players who retired, I recall ByuL, Soulkey, MMA, MC, Life, Rain and ByuN (not to mention all of the mid-tier players who retired). Generally speaking, I think Zest, INnoVation, sOs and herO have struggled the hardest in regaining their old form (besides formerly top players who came back from military like Taeja and Bomber). They've all had good years but overall, I feel like they have declined.
It does feel kind of bleak that after Classic (and players close to his age) leaves, the top 3 players will probably consistently be Maru, Dark and Serral (assuming and hoping that WCS is still running).
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So I just pointed out you claim the Korean SC2 viewership is dead. And I ask you for the source for such claim. You responded with a personal attack no sources.
I didn't claim the SC2 audience is bigger than LoL or other of the big games, why would I do that? I just asked for the source of what I just bolded in your text.
Edit> Also "most old Pros quit for BW" is interesting claim either but I'm too lazy to go into numbers.
I know Rain, ByuL, Sacsri and Soulkey all moved on to BW after retiring in SC2. HerO also played BW for a short while I think (I believe he returned to SC2 though). If you look at the ASL Qualifiers, there are many other SC2 players who have played in them.
I've thought about the lost talent from the past few years and for top players who retired, I recall ByuL, Soulkey, MMA, MC, Life, Rain and ByuN (not to mention all of the mid-tier players who retired). Generally speaking, I think Zest, INnoVation, sOs and herO have struggled the hardest in regaining their old form (besides formerly top players who came back from military like Taeja and Bomber). They've all had good years but overall, I feel like they have declined.
It does feel kind of bleak that after Classic (and players close to his age) leaves, the top 3 players will probably consistently be Maru, Dark and Serral (assuming and hoping that WCS is still running).
Only some old korean sc2 pro went to BW(didn't Byul just go to the army? Hyun surely played BW on the other hand), not most of them.
After KeSpa left sc2, the biggest loss was among mid tier and up and comer koreans, quantity more than quality overall. Zest and sOs have declined, I agree, but Inno just had his most successful year in 2017(herO had a good one tho) and was good enough to beat Serral and Maru in 2019, he surely isn't among the ones who went down the furthest.
The biggest retirement wave of top korean players hasn't happened yet, it's about to happen in 2020(Protoss being hurt the most); I wouldn't be so sure Serral, Maru and Dark will constantly be the strongest after that, sc2 has always been pleasantly surprising: some young european could rise to the top and/or some currently weaker korean could ascend like it happened in the last couple of years.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So I just pointed out you claim the Korean SC2 viewership is dead. And I ask you for the source for such claim. You responded with a personal attack no sources.
I didn't claim the SC2 audience is bigger than LoL or other of the big games, why would I do that? I just asked for the source of what I just bolded in your text.
Edit> Also "most old Pros quit for BW" is interesting claim either but I'm too lazy to go into numbers.
I know Rain, ByuL, Sacsri and Soulkey all moved on to BW after retiring in SC2. HerO also played BW for a short while I think (I believe he returned to SC2 though). If you look at the ASL Qualifiers, there are many other SC2 players who have played in them.
I've thought about the lost talent from the past few years and for top players who retired, I recall ByuL, Soulkey, MMA, MC, Life, Rain and ByuN (not to mention all of the mid-tier players who retired). Generally speaking, I think Zest, INnoVation, sOs and herO have struggled the hardest in regaining their old form (besides formerly top players who came back from military like Taeja and Bomber). They've all had good years but overall, I feel like they have declined.
It does feel kind of bleak that after Classic (and players close to his age) leaves, the top 3 players will probably consistently be Maru, Dark and Serral (assuming and hoping that WCS is still running).
Only some old korean sc2 pro went to BW(didn't Byul just go to the army? Hyun surely played BW on the other hand), not most of them.
After KeSpa left sc2, the biggest loss was among mid tier and up and comer koreans, quantity more than quality overall. Zest and sOs have declined, I agree, but Inno just had his most successful year in 2017(herO had a good one tho) and was good enough to beat Serral and Maru in 2019, he surely isn't among the ones who went down the furthest.
The biggest retirement wave of top korean players hasn't happened yet, it's about to happen in 2020(Protoss being hurt the most); I wouldn't be so sure Serral, Maru and Dark will constantly be the strongest after that, sc2 has always been pleasantly surprising: some young european could rise to the top and/or some currently weaker korean could ascend like it happened in the last couple of years.
yeah I forgot about HyuN. It seems to me that there are slightly fewer really good Koreans but way fewer mid-tier Koreans. I think Inno did have great 2017 but his other 3 years were so lackluster in comparison. In HotS, he made all 3 Blizzcon but in LotV he only made 1 out of 4. It really looked like he was going to do well in 2019 but the GSL ro32 was a devastating loss (I think that's the first GSL ro32 he's ever been eliminated from).
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So another one who has the numbers from Afreeca and their Korean viewership. Can you prove that the vewier count is dead? Foreign stream is stable(and is comparable to the KeSPA numbers) and mind you, AFAIK the Korean viewers can see it on the TV. So unless you insist Afreeca's main stream is the English stream(which would be wrong), give us the numbers how dead is it, please.
Anyway, yesterday GSL studio had some standing fans, GSL is so dead people have to stand there
You talk about things you don't even understand. Your brain is so messed up.
First of all, this topic is about player's skill level and not viewer counts. If you insist on a fact that korean player's skill level hasn't dropped (or at least didn't stagnate) after kespa, osl, proleague and proleague teams training system died I have nothing to say to you and don't even want tbh.
Second, the only reason why viewer counts can kind of matter is because it means that game has bigger attention and probably more players are playing it, which can sometimes lead to more good players being born inside of the community. This is where we can compare studios and amount of people there. Before all of this I want to ask you a simple question: have you been in GSL studio? Well, I was. Now let's think. LoL PARK has 500 sitting places, no standing allowed, you need to buy tickets, it is almost always full. FreecUP studio has about 150 sitting places, when it is ASL days (which is BW) it can become bigger to about 200 sitting places, entrance is free and from the latest translations I saw - it is not always full. Now let's think what game has bigger attention: game with brand new stadium for 500 viewers, that is always full and takes money from you to get it or a game with a studio that deliberately removes some of it's chairs on some days and not always full even with free entrance. Even if we will only talk about "last stream where people were standing" that is 250 viewers max on what was probably one of the few best days in terms of viewer interest (btw. it was because of BW player that refused to play BW), compared to standart 500 sitting viewers. Yeah, tell me more about how SC2 important and big in Korea.
Third, why you even bring foreign streams viewer counts when we talk about korean players and their level of play.
p.s. Info and photos of LoL Park. Photo of Freec UP Studio with additional places for BW day.
On August 29 2019 16:12 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Korean SC2 is dead, so ofc "the gap is closed". It is like closing the gap between a guy that works out every day and handicapped person. The only reason why SC2 is breathing is chinese money. Just compare size of sc2 scene to lol scene, pubg scene or overwatch scene. Hell you can even probably compare SC2 scene to Fifa Online 3 and BW and still it won't favor SC2.
Just think to yourself what changed in the last 5 years in foreign scene? Probably nothing, we still have a number of players that are sponsored by some random teams. What happened to KR scene? Proleague dead, all pro teams dead, as a result all B-teams dead, viewer counts dead, most old pro's quit in favor of BW and ect.
So I just pointed out you claim the Korean SC2 viewership is dead. And I ask you for the source for such claim. You responded with a personal attack no sources.
I didn't claim the SC2 audience is bigger than LoL or other of the big games, why would I do that? I just asked for the source of what I just bolded in your text.
Edit> Also "most old Pros quit for BW" is interesting claim either but I'm too lazy to go into numbers.
I know Rain, ByuL, Sacsri and Soulkey all moved on to BW after retiring in SC2. HerO also played BW for a short while I think (I believe he returned to SC2 though). If you look at the ASL Qualifiers, there are many other SC2 players who have played in them.
I've thought about the lost talent from the past few years and for top players who retired, I recall ByuL, Soulkey, MMA, MC, Life, Rain and ByuN (not to mention all of the mid-tier players who retired). Generally speaking, I think Zest, INnoVation, sOs and herO have struggled the hardest in regaining their old form (besides formerly top players who came back from military like Taeja and Bomber). They've all had good years but overall, I feel like they have declined.
It does feel kind of bleak that after Classic (and players close to his age) leaves, the top 3 players will probably consistently be Maru, Dark and Serral (assuming and hoping that WCS is still running).
Only some old korean sc2 pro went to BW(didn't Byul just go to the army? Hyun surely played BW on the other hand), not most of them.
After KeSpa left sc2, the biggest loss was among mid tier and up and comer koreans, quantity more than quality overall. Zest and sOs have declined, I agree, but Inno just had his most successful year in 2017(herO had a good one tho) and was good enough to beat Serral and Maru in 2019, he surely isn't among the ones who went down the furthest.
The biggest retirement wave of top korean players hasn't happened yet, it's about to happen in 2020(Protoss being hurt the most); I wouldn't be so sure Serral, Maru and Dark will constantly be the strongest after that, sc2 has always been pleasantly surprising: some young european could rise to the top and/or some currently weaker korean could ascend like it happened in the last couple of years.
yeah I forgot about HyuN. It seems to me that there are slightly fewer really good Koreans but way fewer mid-tier Koreans. I think Inno did have great 2017 but his other 3 years were so lackluster in comparison. In HotS, he made all 3 Blizzcon but in LotV he only made 1 out of 4. It really looked like he was going to do well in 2019 but the GSL ro32 was a devastating loss (I think that's the first GSL ro32 he's ever been eliminated from).
Honestly watching some GSL yesterday and fantasy special and keen played so insanely good, makes me really doubt the whole koreans are not improving but getting worse, ut just seems to me that everyone has gotten so good at this game that it's really hard to just dominate every player ever series.
Like even serral and dark can look weak in some games, I think the bar is just so high that everyone thinks it's a decline but it really isnt
Yeah been watching games sense WOL and honestly I think they are the strongest they have ever been past 2 years. No one has ever played better than Maru at his peak last year.
I don't feel like the gap is closing for foreigners is as significant as you make it seem. In fact I argue over the past 3 years the competition of Foreigners vs Koreans there has been just about the same if not stagnant level of play. Players like Scarlett and neeb have performed at about the same level for the past year while koreans haven't necessarily gotten significantly better. Ever since the TakBangLeeSang retired from SC2 there hasn't been much innovation(yes its a pun) in play except to just adapt to the patches.
For anyone who thinks Koreans improved since the kespa days: In 2014 middle tier Koreans like Pigbaby could stomp foreigners on 300 ping and collect some easy cash. Nowadays middle tier European Zergs show up in finals in Seoul. The top 8 of Korea are the best in the world along with Serral but the middle of the pack is quickly getting overwhelmed.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
If say we take such a large sample size of 100/100 I might actually give koreans alot less chance then I would before, there are alot of skilled foreigners and alot less koreans who are top notch anymore, it's kinda crazy but they might not have the numbers anymore lol
this would be hilarious to test tho i do feel like the kr's trying to get into gsl are better than the foreigners trying to break in to wcs. what evidence do i have to base this on? nothing. but i think it would be a fun open tournament lol
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
There's far more non-Korean players. Korea might have an advantage in the first 30 to 35 players but the drop-off after that is massive because you go from pros to amateurs while the non-Koreans still have reserves.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
Top 100 koreans right now are worse than top 100 foreigners as a whole: to name one, on Aligulac MCanning is ranked #80 among non koreans while Elizae is #40 in Korea at the moment, you would get 50+ series of low level non korean pros vs random korean grandmasters at best.
Top 20 koreans are better than their non korean counterpart by quite a large margin, top 5 is a closer affair and considering top 50 the foreign scene may already have the advantage.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
Top 100 koreans right now are worse than top 100 foreigners as a whole: to name one, on Aligulac MCanning is ranked #80 among non koreans while Elizae is #40 in Korea at the moment, you would get 50+ series of low level non korean pros vs random korean grandmasters at best.
Top 20 koreans are better than their non korean counterpart by quite a large margin, top 5 is a closer affair and considering top 50 the foreign scene may already have the advantage.
i would love to see them duke it out, though. maybe i'm thinking in bw terms. sc2 is probably more aligned to what you and other posters have been saying.
edit: it's worth noting that for a lot of tournaments, eu and kr players are not playing head-to-head 'offline' so i don't know if you can use aligulac to determine these things. besides a few top eu players, eu and kr are pretty insular besides small online cups
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
Top 100 koreans right now are worse than top 100 foreigners as a whole: to name one, on Aligulac MCanning is ranked #80 among non koreans while Elizae is #40 in Korea at the moment, you would get 50+ series of low level non korean pros vs random korean grandmasters at best.
Top 20 koreans are better than their non korean counterpart by quite a large margin, top 5 is a closer affair and considering top 50 the foreign scene may already have the advantage.
i would love to see them duke it out, though. maybe i'm thinking in bw terms. sc2 is probably more aligned to what you and other posters have been saying.
edit: it's worth noting that for a lot of tournaments, eu and kr players are not playing head-to-head 'offline' so i don't know if you can use aligulac to determine these things. besides a few top eu players, eu and kr are pretty insular besides small online cups
Probably you are still thinking in HoTS terms, in BW terms post KeSpa top 50 would still be all koreans I guess.
I wasn't comparing Aligulac ratings, just rankings; if we come down to ratings, Demi(#99 non korean) is on par with Speed(#39 korean) but what you are saying is true, mid and low tier koreans almost never play offline against their western counterpart.
I just found on Root Gaming's site an interesting article by Brownbear called "David vs Goliath", that offers some thought and datas on region lock and foreigners vs koreans arguments.
Interesting how whenever we talk about "removing region lock", there's no discussion of one country having eight Blizzcon spots reserved for the results of one tournament series in which both the qualifiers and entire main tournament are held exclusively on LAN in the same country, have been since 2010, and still has the utter gall to call itself "Global". Call me crazy, but that sounds like it's been a pretty powerful regional locking mechanism for about nine years.
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
I mean absolutely, but I can’t really think of other players to throw out.
They’re players who have qualified for GSLs, and also by virtue of their names have played in an offline tournament vs foreigners as well in the same kind of span.
If this is how players who can still make Code S do vs foreigners now, and we contrast that with previous eras and how Koreans who were Ro32 Code S level, or didn’t even play in it, I think that’s been by far the area of most shift between the scenes.
On September 03 2019 08:20 Circumstance wrote: Interesting how whenever we talk about "removing region lock", there's no discussion of one country having eight Blizzcon spots reserved for the results of one tournament series in which both the qualifiers and entire main tournament are held exclusively on LAN in the same country, have been since 2010, and still has the utter gall to call itself "Global". Call me crazy, but that sounds like it's been a pretty powerful regional locking mechanism for about nine years.
I love how we never talk about the fact that said country has 12 out of top 16 players yet has reserved ONLY 8 spots. Not 10(which would be still favorable towards WCS).
On August 29 2019 10:17 Alejandrisha wrote: when is this conversation going to die? the best 100 koreans are far better than the best 100 foreigners and this is not even close. there is a select group of foreigners that can go toe-to-toe with the best koreans, have lots of offline experience and beat koreans in tournaments. the fact that people can't reconcile these two things and just want to gloss over it with a blanket statement is just, well, stupid. the best 5 foreigners vs the best 5 kr players would be a wash. the best 20 koreans vs the best 20 foreigners... the koreans would wreck them. gap closed? stupid question.
Well I mean is that really true now?
Bomber and Taeja who can make Ro32 in GSL got absolutely destroyed at ASUS ROG
i think the top 100 koreans are way better than the top 100 foreigners. but i would love to see this be put to the test. tho how could this happen?? offline? unfeasible. online? lag gg. edit: also, bomber is washed up. taeja is way out of form (and i know you know this wombat :p)
I mean absolutely, but I can’t really think of other players to throw out.
They’re players who have qualified for GSLs, and also by virtue of their names have played in an offline tournament vs foreigners as well in the same kind of span.
If this is how players who can still make Code S do vs foreigners now, and we contrast that with previous eras and how Koreans who were Ro32 Code S level, or didn’t even play in it, I think that’s been by far the area of most shift between the scenes.
I actually think that they're the most noticable because Terran wasn't particulary strong and SC2 made a huge step forward between HotS and LotV and generally during every post-Blizzcon patch. Parting returned and isn't that bad(isn't that good either though).
Didnt we go 7-8 vs team korea (and these were the top players at the time) in 2011? That was the first time any of us played vs Koreans live at an event (minus guys like HuK and Jinro). Prior to that no one practiced on KR or with pro teams.
On September 07 2019 05:46 TT1 wrote: Didnt we go 7-8 vs team korea (and these were the top players at the time) in 2011? That was the first time any of us played vs Koreans live at an event (minus guys like HuK and Jinro). Prior to that no one practiced on KR or with pro teams.
Yes, you did and it was amazing! Dimaga lost the ace game against NesTea before breaking his streak in ZvZ the next day.
EPT
IEM Season XII - World Championship
