I’m a SC2 player from Chinese community. My English is bad, so sry about that if there’s grammatical error or something like that. My opinion about region-lock policy is explicit. It is no longer necessary as it was and need to be cancelled.
The reason why, initially, the region-lock policy was suggested, is to protect the competition environment of foreign players. The skill level gap between Korean players and foreign players was huge at that time. However, the gap is noticeably shrank in this year. I listed the result of foreign players vs Korean players in WCS Final Group Stage down below to show how small the level gap has become.
Dark 3:2 Showtime Soo 3:2 Special Soo 3:1 Showtime
You can see that foreign players showed almost as the same level as Korean players in most of the matchups. Only 2 matches were get 0:3 by Korean players. In my opinion, the fundamental reason that support region-lock policies is no longer exist.
Moreover, if region-lock policy still continued in 2020, GSL will been at stake. There are 9 korean players who confirm retirement/with high possibility to retire in next year. (At least what Chinese community knows). They are Classic, Soo(27), herO, Gumiho(27), Zest(27) , sOs(26), Stats(27), TRUE(27), Innovation(26). If they retire, then the meaning of GSL, a Premier level tournament that as same as WCS tournaments, will be questionable. Korean SC2 will be more deadly than ever. On the contrary, if region-lock policy is cancelled, it might have some new Korean blood that flourish Korean SC2 and makes more high-quality matchups for audience from all over the world.
There’s a vote in Chinese community that support cancellation of region-lock policy. Within 373 voted, 227 of them support that region-lock policy needs to be cancelled. Despite that small number of votes and most of them are TIME’s fans. This is the voice from Chinese community. What’s your voice about this?
The way I see it 2 things need to change before the region lock can be removed.
1. Prize pools must be less top heavy 2. The GSL must become a weekend tournament
Without region lock it is much easier for Korean players to participate in GSL and international tournaments than non-Koreans due to GSL lasting several months per season. That combined with top heavy prize pools would make it extremely difficult for most non-Koreans to make a living playing SC2. Region lock isn't hurting the Korean scene that much, it's the top heavy prize pool doing most of the harm.
If the region lock stays, I'd be fine with a cultural exchange program, where X number of WCS players are given a seed for GSL and X number of GSL players are given a seed for WCS. And no player can be in both. So this would give a lot of the players who failed to qualify for GSL a chance to make some money at WCS, and vice versa.
There's been many discussions about the region lock, and I've said the same thing because the issue hasn't changed. The primary issue for Korea is that there is too wide of a skill gap between the ro16 Koreans, the ro32 Koreans, and those who cannot make it into Code S. In WCS, although there's a big skill gap, we have the top, middle, and bottom top foreigners (as well as the emerging foreigners).
Right now, if you were to open up the regions and used a WCS-style Korea qualifier, then we would get Maru, Rogue, Stats, and Dark (and maybe some other depending on form). They don't need to be in an unregion-locked tournament. The people who actually need to be in a region-locked tournament would be taken out in the ro32 if not earlier. When you have players like Nice or Astrea taking out your potential Koreans, there's no way these guys would make any dent in a WCS tournament. I am a little conflicted about having foreigners in GSL when there are few Koreans (Masa is a Korean but has a Canadian passport) in WCS, but players like Scarlett and Special have contributed to the scene.
Unlocking regions only helps those who don't need to be helped. What needs to happen is to grow the scene organically on the inside or by having a newbie-only tournament.
My suggestion was and still is to have a 12 month revolving point system where people can compete in a challenger online tournament (maybe the finals are offline) as long as they do not achieve a certain number of WCS/WCS Korea points. Similar to how in Tennis, your ranking is determined by your achievements in the prior year, it would be the same for this format. This would be like the challenger tournament system we have now, but it would run independently of the WCS circuit, and it would probably be open to all regions (though time would be an issue).
FrkFrJss is correct in every regard about the Korean scene. There can never be real "new blood" in the Korean scene until all the old blood is gone. The skill gap can never and will never be overcome. Besides any new koreans will get destroyed by the top-tier and even middle-tier foreigners in the WCS.
IMO the region lock has served it's purpose and is really no longer necessary. But don't go thinking that any new korean players can waltz over to the WCS and win easily, because that ain't gonna happen anymore.
If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
On November 09 2019 14:53 dalecooper wrote: If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
I do not want to be rude but i think that you are not on point. To see a growing scene you need interest from public. You get interest if the game is appealing and if the public get engaged in the support mechanic (ie: finding someone to root for). About the appeal of the game there are few things that can be done, we are talking of a great game, but still it is 9 years old: there is not a great possibility it will appeal hundreds of thousands people that it has not appealed yet. About the supporting mechanic, like it or not, it is fundamental that there will be local heroes: we have seen (until the region lock was applied) that the koreans fails to appeal the western fans like foreigners. But to have real foreigners heroes they need to be on par with koreans, but to reach this objective, they have to have an incentive to become good, an incentive that nowadays is given by the wcs system, where the competition in the lower stages is far from the GSL level and so newer players can rise (a few names that come to my mind are Time and Clem). I firmly believe that the improvement in skill level in foregneirland is due to the WCS system. About team losses and such: we did not have proper teams anymore in WCS from ages, so i imagine you are speaking about korean team. Here the hard truth is simple that there is no support (or too small support) for SC2 in the korean audience, but this is not fault of the WCS system: they had the totality of the better players but they did not like the game (or they prefer other games, that in this reasoning is the same) so teams disbanded because of financial susteinability.
So i would mantain the current system. If there is money available i will add more cross region tournaments. If you want to be "fair" i would exclude foreigners from GSL, but what i surely would not do is open the WCS to korean: it will not save korean scene and will falter foreigner scene.
TLDR: WCS system has at least stabilized the foreigner scene, improving its skill level a lot. Korean scene is dieing not because the region lock but because lack of interest for the game there.
On November 09 2019 14:53 dalecooper wrote: If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
I do not want to be rude but i think that you are not on point. To see a growing scene you need interest from public. You get interest if the game is appealing and if the public get engaged in the support mechanic (ie: finding someone to root for). About the appeal of the game there are few things that can be done, we are talking of a great game, but still it is 9 years old: there is not a great possibility it will appeal hundreds of thousands people that it has not appealed yet. About the supporting mechanic, like it or not, it is fundamental that there will be local heroes: we have seen (until the region lock was applied) that the koreans fails to appeal the western fans like foreigners. But to have real foreigners heroes they need to be on par with koreans, but to reach this objective, they have to have an incentive to become good, an incentive that nowadays is given by the wcs system, where the competition in the lower stages is far from the GSL level and so newer players can rise (a few names that come to my mind are Time and Clem). I firmly believe that the improvement in skill level in foregneirland is due to the WCS system. About team losses and such: we did not have proper teams anymore in WCS from ages, so i imagine you are speaking about korean team. Here the hard truth is simple that there is no support (or too small support) for SC2 in the korean audience, but this is not fault of the WCS system: they had the totality of the better players but they did not like the game (or they prefer other games, that in this reasoning is the same) so teams disbanded because of financial susteinability.
So i would mantain the current system. If there is money available i will add more cross region tournaments. If you want to be "fair" i would exclude foreigners from GSL, but what i surely would not do is open the WCS to korean: it will not save korean scene and will falter foreigner scene.
TLDR: WCS system has at least stabilized the foreigner scene, improving its skill level a lot. Korean scene is dieing not because the region lock but because lack of interest for the game there.
See, nothing more than this. You have been stuck. You need to up your education. Have you tried to read Nietzsche "beyond good and evil"? chapter II. the free spirit. go and try.
On November 09 2019 14:53 dalecooper wrote: If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
I do not want to be rude but i think that you are not on point. To see a growing scene you need interest from public. You get interest if the game is appealing and if the public get engaged in the support mechanic (ie: finding someone to root for). About the appeal of the game there are few things that can be done, we are talking of a great game, but still it is 9 years old: there is not a great possibility it will appeal hundreds of thousands people that it has not appealed yet. About the supporting mechanic, like it or not, it is fundamental that there will be local heroes: we have seen (until the region lock was applied) that the koreans fails to appeal the western fans like foreigners. But to have real foreigners heroes they need to be on par with koreans, but to reach this objective, they have to have an incentive to become good, an incentive that nowadays is given by the wcs system, where the competition in the lower stages is far from the GSL level and so newer players can rise (a few names that come to my mind are Time and Clem). I firmly believe that the improvement in skill level in foregneirland is due to the WCS system. About team losses and such: we did not have proper teams anymore in WCS from ages, so i imagine you are speaking about korean team. Here the hard truth is simple that there is no support (or too small support) for SC2 in the korean audience, but this is not fault of the WCS system: they had the totality of the better players but they did not like the game (or they prefer other games, that in this reasoning is the same) so teams disbanded because of financial susteinability.
So i would mantain the current system. If there is money available i will add more cross region tournaments. If you want to be "fair" i would exclude foreigners from GSL, but what i surely would not do is open the WCS to korean: it will not save korean scene and will falter foreigner scene.
TLDR: WCS system has at least stabilized the foreigner scene, improving its skill level a lot. Korean scene is dieing not because the region lock but because lack of interest for the game there.
See, nothing more than this. You have been stuck. You need to up your education. Have you tried to read Nietzsche "beyond good and evil"? chapter II. the free spirit. go and try.
Ok, so it is simply a question of education. You have been stuck in an ideal world. Nothing wrong with that but i still prefer a quantitative/pragmatic vision. I think the fact here is that there is no new blood in korea since the kespa arrival, so their stagnation is indepent from the WCS. Furthermore, since WCS stating the foregneirs level of play has grown up. The only possible effects that i see in removing the lock is to stop the improvement of foreigners. So, keep the lock like it is.
On November 09 2019 14:53 dalecooper wrote: If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
I do not want to be rude but i think that you are not on point. To see a growing scene you need interest from public. You get interest if the game is appealing and if the public get engaged in the support mechanic (ie: finding someone to root for). About the appeal of the game there are few things that can be done, we are talking of a great game, but still it is 9 years old: there is not a great possibility it will appeal hundreds of thousands people that it has not appealed yet. About the supporting mechanic, like it or not, it is fundamental that there will be local heroes: we have seen (until the region lock was applied) that the koreans fails to appeal the western fans like foreigners. But to have real foreigners heroes they need to be on par with koreans, but to reach this objective, they have to have an incentive to become good, an incentive that nowadays is given by the wcs system, where the competition in the lower stages is far from the GSL level and so newer players can rise (a few names that come to my mind are Time and Clem). I firmly believe that the improvement in skill level in foregneirland is due to the WCS system. About team losses and such: we did not have proper teams anymore in WCS from ages, so i imagine you are speaking about korean team. Here the hard truth is simple that there is no support (or too small support) for SC2 in the korean audience, but this is not fault of the WCS system: they had the totality of the better players but they did not like the game (or they prefer other games, that in this reasoning is the same) so teams disbanded because of financial susteinability.
So i would mantain the current system. If there is money available i will add more cross region tournaments. If you want to be "fair" i would exclude foreigners from GSL, but what i surely would not do is open the WCS to korean: it will not save korean scene and will falter foreigner scene.
TLDR: WCS system has at least stabilized the foreigner scene, improving its skill level a lot. Korean scene is dieing not because the region lock but because lack of interest for the game there.
I don't know how much I agree that Koreans could not "appeal" to foreigners, as even with a general crowd, Koreans have received massive applause even in arenas with foreigners. Players like Polt, MC, and PartinG have been massive historical fans because of their personality (and, in the case of MC and Polt, because they learned English and were able to communicate with fans). That being said, is true that certain foreigners do garner large audiences? Yes. We've seen it both with Serral and Finland as well as Scarlett in South Korea and in China, with both having massive audiences in those areas.
As for your second point, we can see from both the number of Koreans in the GSL and Code A as well as the teams from 2011-2015 how many people actually leave and retire from Starcraft II. Even though there's a lot of tournaments in 2014 and only slightly less in 2015, they're still down from 2012. The scene had already been losing audiences even before the region lock came into play.
Though we can look at 2016 where region-lock fully came into play with LotV, there are a couple of very key points that also occurred.
2015 - The Prime match-fixing scandal where a number of players were arrested due to match-fixing. 2016 - Life (and Bbyong) are arrested for match-fixing. 2016 - Sbenu CEO sued for fraud.
I believe this combination of events as well as region lock to a certain extent, had a huge impact on the Korean scene.
Kespa closed in 2016. its now 2020. teamhouses are long gone, we have an entirely new meta, foreigners have no reason not to be able to compete with Koreans. Captain America Polt himself even called the wcs region lock racist. Imo this needs to end. now while blizzard did sorta address this I ?think? as a result scarlett wasnt allowed to play a wcs challenger because she played gsl. but its still imba.
On November 09 2019 18:05 CicadaSC wrote: Kespa closed in 2016. its now 2020. teamhouses are long gone, we have an entirely new meta, foreigners have no reason not to be able to compete with Koreans. Captain America Polt himself even called the wcs region lock racist. Imo this needs to end. https://twitter.com/TSG_Solar/status/1073116274144595968 now while blizzard did sorta address this I ?think? as a result scarlett wasnt allowed to play a wcs challenger because she played gsl. but its still imba.
To be clear: the korean saying that the possibility for the foreigners to compete in both wcs and gsl is unfair certainly have a point. But to me the solution is not to remove the locking but instead to lock the GSL to the foreigners and let the 2 worlds compete only in cross region events.
The region lock has a lot to do with the foreign scene's improvement. If anything, foreigners should be banned from GSL. I love seeing Scarlett, Special, etc play in GSL. But, they are taking the limited opportunities from newer Korean players that are trying to qualify, which is stunting the growth of the Korean scene.
On November 09 2019 18:05 CicadaSC wrote: Kespa closed in 2016. its now 2020. teamhouses are long gone, we have an entirely new meta, foreigners have no reason not to be able to compete with Koreans. Captain America Polt himself even called the wcs region lock racist. Imo this needs to end. https://twitter.com/TSG_Solar/status/1073116274144595968 now while blizzard did sorta address this I ?think? as a result scarlett wasnt allowed to play a wcs challenger because she played gsl. but its still imba.
To be clear: the korean saying that the possibility for the foreigners to compete in both wcs and gsl is unfair certainly have a point. But to me the solution is not to remove the locking but instead to lock the GSL to the foreigners and let the 2 worlds compete only in cross region events.
this. removing region-lock would do nothing to foster new blood (only give more opportunities to already established players).
On November 09 2019 14:53 dalecooper wrote: If you want so see a growing scene then there is no need to have region lock. But if you are concerned about who is gonna win and what country is it... well then probably you are heavy addicted to region lock. I have heard enough about pros and cons from people ... even something like "i hate koreans or i hate foreginers they are sucks, they are took all money" and especially from casters (like ZG, Catz, NoRegret, etc). And it look like they are all preoccupied to their own business and concerned only about cash for themselves.
With region lock we have lost number of teams. There is no place to stability. We have lost big sponsors and environment as like as decent number of tournaments. We have lost dozen names. It's a stagnation. It's a stagnation under our present rules but also it's a degradation of human nature.
"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.” with open scene you can learn and be a teacher. Scene where is place to rule to not give a player a place to play just because he is better and have a passion is absurd.
I do not want to be rude but i think that you are not on point. To see a growing scene you need interest from public. You get interest if the game is appealing and if the public get engaged in the support mechanic (ie: finding someone to root for). About the appeal of the game there are few things that can be done, we are talking of a great game, but still it is 9 years old: there is not a great possibility it will appeal hundreds of thousands people that it has not appealed yet. About the supporting mechanic, like it or not, it is fundamental that there will be local heroes: we have seen (until the region lock was applied) that the koreans fails to appeal the western fans like foreigners. But to have real foreigners heroes they need to be on par with koreans, but to reach this objective, they have to have an incentive to become good, an incentive that nowadays is given by the wcs system, where the competition in the lower stages is far from the GSL level and so newer players can rise (a few names that come to my mind are Time and Clem). I firmly believe that the improvement in skill level in foregneirland is due to the WCS system. About team losses and such: we did not have proper teams anymore in WCS from ages, so i imagine you are speaking about korean team. Here the hard truth is simple that there is no support (or too small support) for SC2 in the korean audience, but this is not fault of the WCS system: they had the totality of the better players but they did not like the game (or they prefer other games, that in this reasoning is the same) so teams disbanded because of financial susteinability.
So i would mantain the current system. If there is money available i will add more cross region tournaments. If you want to be "fair" i would exclude foreigners from GSL, but what i surely would not do is open the WCS to korean: it will not save korean scene and will falter foreigner scene.
TLDR: WCS system has at least stabilized the foreigner scene, improving its skill level a lot. Korean scene is dieing not because the region lock but because lack of interest for the game there.
See, nothing more than this. You have been stuck. You need to up your education. Have you tried to read Nietzsche "beyond good and evil"? chapter II. the free spirit. go and try.
Ok, so it is simply a question of education. You have been stuck in an ideal world. Nothing wrong with that but i still prefer a quantitative/pragmatic vision. I think the fact here is that there is no new blood in korea since the kespa arrival, so their stagnation is indepent from the WCS. Furthermore, since WCS stating the foregneirs level of play has grown up. The only possible effects that i see in removing the lock is to stop the improvement of foreigners. So, keep the lock like it is.
- Number of tournaments heavily decreased. No more Zotac cups, Corsair cups, ESL cups. Only one IEM, only one ASUS ROG (and it was only in 2019, and it was an international tournament). Environment is dead. - No more teams. Only mercenaries. Every single 3 month you can see a "new team". No stability. Teams with the story and legacy are dead. mYi, DP, EG, Millenium, EURONICS, Acer. No one want to invest or to have a starcraft 2 team today. - Sponsors. Where are the sponsors? Only chinese investors doing some great support. But where is your power ohh mighty foreigner hype companies? - Brownbear not so long ago at the PylonShow proved with some statistics that there is no hype even at GSL. Foreigners or Koreans it doesnt matter. And btw Noregret he was caught lying like you. Where is your numbers? You can go and check statistics. The best numbers at international tournaments when koreans playing vs non-korean players. - Back in 2014-2015. Have you remember number of viewers at twitch/justin? Dragon had 2k viewers. MC, INno, Polt were on top. - Even today, who can gather an audience? Who can be more real? Honestly. Maru, INno, ByuN, Polt, Zest.
it's a self-damage. You have trying to protect yourself. This is human nature. You hiding your personal reasons and hate but telling people that's bad to have open scene. While simply you can't even count numbers. I'm sorry if i am too harsh. I'm not a fan of it at all.
WCS
