WESG 2018 Grand Final Groups

On February 18 2019 19:04 sneakyfox wrote:
So they finally announced who the other two invited players are (on top of Maru and Serral): two Chinese zergs, iAsonu and TooDming.

Balance is then Protoss (13) Terran (12) Zerg (23)

On February 18 2019 18:27 RealityTheGreat wrote:
Stephano qualified from Africa Region again...

On February 18 2019 20:24 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:


I dunno Kev, I'm thinking those foreigner heathens in group A might be able to scrounge together something kinda cool. I mean it does contain a world champ and a recent GSL semi-finalist.

On February 18 2019 20:17 Xophy wrote:


Considering that most people tend to say that group A is the group of death, featuring matchups between three of the best foreigners, your definition of "interesting" is, well ... interesting.

On February 18 2019 23:08 Rodya wrote:

I don't think it's a group of death. It's pretty clear to me that the two best players in it are Serral and Neeb, and Serral vs Neeb sounds uninteresting. I guess if you are a fan of some of the other players in the group though (for instance, Neeb), then you'd easily disagree. I'm a fan of Scarlett but I'm still not going to watch her crush these kids in her group.

I only like to watch high quality matches, which is why Maru vs Special may be interesting, since Special (like Scarlett) has high potential in any match.

On February 18 2019 23:53 fronkschnonk wrote:

I always should look who posts stuff. I wouldn't be as surprised when the weirdest perception of reality gets expressed. Showtime proved to be more successful than Neeb last year, especially in the 2nd half of the year. He had a slightly better head-to-head record in 2018 winning the more important matches (WCS playoffs twice) and also winning their last two matches. He also had a slightly better record vs Koreans in 2018. Also Showtime and Neeb proved to be able to take maps off Serral in the past, so there is a possibility that even Serral could bomb out of the group (I highly doubt that but if there are two foreigners able to make this happen then it would be those two protosses). Their overall winrate is essentially the same but Showtime's is gained vs an overall tougher competition while Neeb's is a bit bloated by his wins vs NA-Players below the surface of the few top players they have.

It would be really funny if Serral wouldn't make it out of the group an Maru won the whole thing ^^

On February 18 2019 23:53 fronkschnonk wrote:

I always should look who posts stuff. I wouldn't be as surprised when the weirdest perception of reality gets expressed. Showtime proved to be more successful than Neeb last year, especially in the 2nd half of the year. He had a slightly better head-to-head record in 2018 winning the more important matches (WCS playoffs twice) and also winning their last two matches. He also had a slightly better record vs Koreans in 2018. Also Showtime and Neeb proved to be able to take maps off Serral in the past, so there is a possibility that even Serral could bomb out of the group (I highly doubt that but if there are two foreigners able to make this happen then it would be those two protosses). Their overall winrate is essentially the same but Showtime's is gained vs an overall tougher competition while Neeb's is a bit bloated by his wins vs NA-Players below the surface of the few top players they have.

It would be really funny if Serral wouldn't make it out of the group an Maru won the whole thing ^^

On February 19 2019 01:02 Rodya wrote:

Depends on if you think the WCS tournaments are important results. IEM and GSL Neeb is way better. The next tier of tournaments are WESG and Blizzcon, and Neebs games at both were better. The quality of play is just different. The only saving grace for Showtime is that PvP is kind of coinflippy since Neebs' micro isn't at the level of Stats or Classic.

^Serral vs Neeb is going to be one-sided. If you don't think so, just consider if it were Maru vs Neeb. It's obvious the latter would be an embarassing affair, and I think the former is a comparable difference in skill.

On February 19 2019 01:31 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
Well at least we now know that Wesg absolutely doesn't rig their groups.

On February 19 2019 02:36 digmouse wrote:

WESG's tournament director: "I immediately regret that after drawing group A". True story.

On February 19 2019 10:28 KalWarkov wrote:


seedings completly out of my brain, swapped around 1-2 ppl within 1-2 ranks to get at least 1 per race in each group.
not so hard to get fair and balanced...

On February 19 2019 11:23 Waxangel wrote:


...you understand that the "completely out of my brain" part completely invalidates the seeding? Why not just arbitrarily place people into groups without the seeding entirely (that's EFFECTIVELY what you did)

On February 19 2019 20:11 Rodya wrote:
Aligulac and WCS points are both bad metrics. You might disagree, but it is not an objective matter like you think it is.

On February 20 2019 00:52 Waxangel wrote:


They're objective metrics in that they consistently apply a set of rules that don't involve human judgment. Now, those rules have clear flaws and imperfections, but saying they're not 'objective' is not the correct argument against them.

On February 20 2019 01:14 thickertom wrote:
PSISTORM.Silky forfeited his spot.
However, maybe one person can replace him because the message is much earlier than the matches start. (Chinglish)
puCK? A Chinese player?
We don't know now.

On February 20 2019 00:52 Waxangel wrote:


They're objective metrics in that they consistently apply a set of rules that don't involve human judgment. Now, those rules have clear flaws and imperfections, but saying they're not 'objective' is not the correct argument against them.

On February 19 2019 21:40 Nakajin wrote:


Well it's still the best we have, unless we go full subjective, it's better to have a metric that can favor foreigner or Koreans a bit than to decide we are the god of Starcraft and that actually Stats losing in the round of 32 dosen't count or things like that.

On February 20 2019 04:04 Tommy131313 wrote:


Don't worry about the Rodya guy, he's the friendly little troll of TL

On February 20 2019 04:52 It's britney bitch wrote:
wesg has been traditionally drawing quite wild groups, this been going in other games too such was 1.6 cs etc. long time

so it's kinda different type of a tournament than others in terms of pre-seedings. the point is i guess that everybody starts at same line and then you have bunch of players and teams all over the world, not necessarily the absolute top teams/players. yes, you could easily do seedings for example high-medium-low buckets and draw 2 from each or something like that and you would have fairer groups no question but yeah..., just accept it's a bit different

On February 20 2019 04:16 fronkschnonk wrote:

At least he gives some cause for discussion :D

@Rodya
You'll have either no ranking or a ranking based on criteria chosen by human judgement. I prefer the idea to opt for the most reasonable and most widely accepted ranking there is (which would be aligulac). But as I said: in addition put players in skill groups and seed them randomly into the groups to make their exact placement in the ranking less impactful.

On February 20 2019 04:16 fronkschnonk wrote:
@Rodya
You'll have either no ranking or a ranking based on criteria chosen by human judgement. I prefer the idea to opt for the most reasonable and most widely accepted ranking there is (which would be aligulac). But as I said: in addition put players in skill groups and seed them randomly into the groups to make their exact placement in the ranking less impactful.

I would much prefer the tournament organizer use their own personal discretion in putting people into tiers.

On February 20 2019 08:02 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
I've seen other games do seeding based on the organizers discretion, it's better than nothing. Although it has turned to shitshows like what happened with the Smash Ultimate seeding at Genesis, but in a more established game like SC2 it really isn't too difficult to put a player list like this into tiers and do seeding based of that, GSL does something similar.

On February 20 2019 07:37 Rodya wrote:


If Aligulac is the most widely accepted ranking, than there are no good established rankings (and indeed this is the case regardless).

I would much prefer the tournament organizer use their own personal discretion in putting people into tiers, however with so many players that is quite tough to do, and there are not very many world class players at this event (there are 4 elite players, and a few middling players, and many irrelevant players).

So I think it is reasonable to do what was done: split the 4 elite players apart into separate groups and randomly draw the rest.

On March 07 2019 23:40 DSh1 wrote:
How do the 4 invitations work. I guess Maru, because of reigning Champion and Serral because of Blizzcon, but then?

On March 08 2019 01:20 digmouse wrote:

TooDming for 2nd place in GPL grand finals (the winner TIME already got his spot from Chinese qualifier), iAsonu for being local.

On March 08 2019 04:46 starkiller123 wrote:

I hope TIME can show up and get first in his group, I think he is one of if not the best chinese player at the moment

On March 09 2019 19:09 RealityTheGreat wrote:
But it is still a waste of money.

On March 10 2019 22:45 Kimb3r wrote:
But we don't know anything about the talent, right?

On March 10 2019 23:42 Nakajin wrote:


Aren't the caster in a studio in Kiev?
And in that case did they just fly out Smix?