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United Kingdom20345 Posts
I don't think that they need to be remotely close to the skill level of the pros but with the knowledge base and familiarity with game states required for an analytical caster to perform you have basically free diamond even if you don't actively play the game because you're competing with people who are playing casually, not spending anywhere near as much time thinking about the game as you and it's not like they have amazing mechanics either. That's somewhat dependant on you being proficient with input devices but i don't think that's too much to ask.
Somebody that's casting to tens of thousands or making a lot of money should probably put some focus on improving their gameplay ability which i'd think would step them into the masters range, more or less depending on the person.
I always appriciate the god calls from world class players and those who study them well while having a good understanding of the game. d.apollo was amazing at that and i think he was masters random.
If you're trying to be a play-by-play caster rather than analytical you don't need anywhere as much game knowledge and skill, you just have to keep the camera on action and read out every building, upgrade etc which is started. Please no talking about hedgehogs or random stuff without even mentioning that dude #2 built a stargate 3 minutes ago and then built an oracle out of it.
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On May 21 2020 06:28 dbRic1203 wrote:
For GSL I usually tune into the Pros Casting on Twitch.
Wait, is this a thing?
Who does this? I need this.
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sc2 barely has any good casters unfortunately. tastosis are ok in their own entertaining way and then there is pig who is a pretty decent and knowledgable caster. everyone else is garbage. im sure a lot of you will feel offended now because they like people like rotti on a personal level and because they have been a part of the community for so long, but they are just objectively very bad at their job.
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Yes absolutely critical. Look at Tasteless for example
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This question really misses the key point that people consistently fail to understand about casting esports: different viewers want different experiences from watching a match. While one viewer may prefer highly analytical casting and don't need "all that bullshit hype," other viewers just want to crack a beer and watch space robots explode while someone else helps them enjoy it. A good caster knows how to use their natural presence to enhance the experience as best they can. In a two-person cast, a good caster makes their co-caster look good and provides balance to the experience.
Some casters need to be GMs to best bring the game to their viewers. Some casters do not. Esports casting requires balance. It's OK to have your preferences, but never forget that the audience of a match is never one person.
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I don't think you need to be a good player to be a good caster, although it certainly helps.
I find it kind of funny though that people are bringing up the football argument for someone not needing to be good at the game in order to be a good caster, when we are just a few years out from when they finally brought a strong football player (Romo) into the casting booth and everyone lost their minds because he was so much better than the rest.
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United States33712 Posts
If people really enjoyed casting where someone glances at a build for a second and predicts everything that's going to happen, then we'd see more casters who have the ability to do that.
I think the reality is probably that most fans just want to listen to familiar, friendly voices having a good time while watching StarCraft.
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Being a good player def. helps with casting as your knowledge is vastly superior to the weaker player, therefor you can comment / cast the games better because you inherently know more. Unless the viewers don't care about being given false information, not learning, and only want entertainment, regardless of the value of the content.
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I think its fine if a caster isn't good at the game, they should just know their limitations and not make calls. I think Maynarde is like Diamond 2 or 3, but I still think he's a great caster.
The worst case would be a caster who thinks they know everything and calls games/strategies only to be completely wrong every time.
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On May 23 2020 00:01 StarcraftPeffo wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2020 06:28 dbRic1203 wrote:
For GSL I usually tune into the Pros Casting on Twitch.
Wait, is this a thing? Who does this? I need this.
Harstem and special are doing this quite often.
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The perfect caster would be someone who is very entertaining and also has a very good understanding of the game.
In my opinion the only caster to qualify on both accounts is Special.
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Dominican Republic627 Posts
On May 21 2020 06:28 dbRic1203 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2020 06:21 BonitiilloO wrote:On May 21 2020 06:16 GreasedUpDeafGuy wrote:
Casting quality has decreased GREATLY over the past few years AGREE, casters just talk about the obvious things that are happening in the game, they should give players insight, strategic selection, map conversation, they need to be more like BW back in the days casters, you can learn a lot about the GAME MU by just listening to this korean casters, mean while artosis and tasteless are just pure entertaiment not to much knowledge about the game u can learn from. Artosis actually knows quite a lot about the game. What Tastless does isn t even entertainment for me. For GSL I usually tune into the Pros Casting on Twitch. While it s also not great by any means, at least it s funny, when they are arguing, who s ahead and have realy strong opinions about it. In general I enjoy the casting from other Casters quite a bit, as their mixture of hype/ knowledge/ backgrounds works just better for me than Tastosis.
i have never learn anything from them, they just talk about the obvious, worker count, worker lost, drop incoming, zerg expreding creep, massing ling/banes, bla bla bla, while is entertaining it doenst have any deep knowledge attach to it, back in the days when bw was a thing, korean caster where extremely good explaining why, what, when things happened in a MU so that way viewers can have a better understanding of whats going and and why is it happening.
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Sure, you need to be a good player. But not a great one.
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On May 22 2020 22:38 Morbidius wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2020 22:26 Azzur wrote:On May 21 2020 23:43 catplanetcatplanet wrote:
Considering the question as an absolute, if I had to pick between high-level players offering complex strategic analysis and tastosis laughing at each other's mispronunciations of unit names, I'd go with tastosis. It's nice to have a healthy mix though. But Tastosis were very good players in the past - not great, but very decent. They still play much better than average Brood War.
Yeah artosis is putting up a good showing in BW facing pros on the ladder
On May 23 2020 14:00 BonitiilloO wrote:Show nested quote +On May 21 2020 06:28 dbRic1203 wrote:On May 21 2020 06:21 BonitiilloO wrote:On May 21 2020 06:16 GreasedUpDeafGuy wrote:
Casting quality has decreased GREATLY over the past few years AGREE, casters just talk about the obvious things that are happening in the game, they should give players insight, strategic selection, map conversation, they need to be more like BW back in the days casters, you can learn a lot about the GAME MU by just listening to this korean casters, mean while artosis and tasteless are just pure entertaiment not to much knowledge about the game u can learn from. Artosis actually knows quite a lot about the game. What Tastless does isn t even entertainment for me. For GSL I usually tune into the Pros Casting on Twitch. While it s also not great by any means, at least it s funny, when they are arguing, who s ahead and have realy strong opinions about it. In general I enjoy the casting from other Casters quite a bit, as their mixture of hype/ knowledge/ backgrounds works just better for me than Tastosis. i have never learn anything from them, they just talk about the obvious, worker count, worker lost, drop incoming, zerg expreding creep, massing ling/banes, bla bla bla, while is entertaining it doenst have any deep knowledge attach to it, back in the days when bw was a thing, korean caster where extremely good explaining why, what, when things happened in a MU so that way viewers can have a better understanding of whats going and and why is it happening.
In the present moment where BW is a thing, I think they are very good casters. Tasteless surely knows a lot about BW and whilst the jokes about him and his passion are overdone I think they might have some truth to them.
With that said, Artosis and Tasteless doing great in GSL. The mix of insights and complicated webs of dumb jokes is excellent.
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I think being a high level player helps with game knowledge on the other hand people can be great casters and lower level players, TB and zombie grub are people who come to mind as not being particularly high level players but who are nonetheless excellent casters. I also believe that to an extent casters can achieve a high level of game knowledge without a high level of play. Starcraft is both a strategic and mechanical game. You can spend hours everyday casting games and probably pick up a lot about the pro metagame, what skills and decisions tend to make a player good or successful without having any such skills yourself or ability to effectively exicute what you know on the fly. You don’t have to be as good as Maru to know that he is a really talented player who can pull of styles other pros don’t even use because of his emended multi tasking ability. You don’t need to be a gm cheeser to explain why it is so hard to play vs sos or Has.
Also as for tasteless people forget that he was a brood war pro. I think having a high level understanding of competitive rts is probably good enough to make you a good caster, especially if you have seen as many sc2 games as he has even if he isn’t a particularly high level sc2 player. Both he and artosis are still quite strong bw players.
Id also point out that some casters tend to fall into the hype caster camp despite being quite high level players. For instance I think Maynard is mostly a hype caster but the guy is a gm lplayer with a lot of game knowledge.
Being a high level player does not make you an interesting conversationalist either their are quite a few pros who I would definitely expect to be terrible casters.
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On May 23 2020 17:00 neptunusfisk wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2020 22:38 Morbidius wrote:On May 22 2020 22:26 Azzur wrote:On May 21 2020 23:43 catplanetcatplanet wrote:
Considering the question as an absolute, if I had to pick between high-level players offering complex strategic analysis and tastosis laughing at each other's mispronunciations of unit names, I'd go with tastosis. It's nice to have a healthy mix though. But Tastosis were very good players in the past - not great, but very decent. They still play much better than average Brood War. Yeah artosis is putting up a good showing in BW facing pros on the ladder Show nested quote +On May 23 2020 14:00 BonitiilloO wrote:On May 21 2020 06:28 dbRic1203 wrote:On May 21 2020 06:21 BonitiilloO wrote:On May 21 2020 06:16 GreasedUpDeafGuy wrote:
Casting quality has decreased GREATLY over the past few years AGREE, casters just talk about the obvious things that are happening in the game, they should give players insight, strategic selection, map conversation, they need to be more like BW back in the days casters, you can learn a lot about the GAME MU by just listening to this korean casters, mean while artosis and tasteless are just pure entertaiment not to much knowledge about the game u can learn from. Artosis actually knows quite a lot about the game. What Tastless does isn t even entertainment for me. For GSL I usually tune into the Pros Casting on Twitch. While it s also not great by any means, at least it s funny, when they are arguing, who s ahead and have realy strong opinions about it. In general I enjoy the casting from other Casters quite a bit, as their mixture of hype/ knowledge/ backgrounds works just better for me than Tastosis. i have never learn anything from them, they just talk about the obvious, worker count, worker lost, drop incoming, zerg expreding creep, massing ling/banes, bla bla bla, while is entertaining it doenst have any deep knowledge attach to it, back in the days when bw was a thing, korean caster where extremely good explaining why, what, when things happened in a MU so that way viewers can have a better understanding of whats going and and why is it happening. In the present moment where BW is a thing, I think they are very good casters. Tasteless surely knows a lot about BW and whilst the jokes about him and his passion are overdone I think they might have some truth to them. With that said, Artosis and Tasteless doing great in GSL. The mix of insights and complicated webs of dumb jokes is excellent.
Yeah I like thier casts quite a lot. Also I think a challenge for analytical casting is that it is good to a point it’s nice to have casters talk about the specific game state and wher the players are at, however whenever I see people say they should “rxplain the mu” just think about that statement do you realy want the casters for a tournament to explain tvz evrey game, even though they probably are going to cast 20+ tvzs In just one tourney.....
Good analytical casters talk about the game state and maybe very rairly the actual metagame because talking about the meta quickly turns you into a broken record.
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this has been debated since release. upon release we had a bunch of idiot casters who knew nothing about the game and made money off of the release and they are not here any more. now, we generally have ex pros or casters that have been around long enough to understand the game and they are helped by other pros. these days if you do not know the game well, people will leave your stream in droves for making silly assertions
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United Kingdom20345 Posts
If people really enjoyed casting where someone glances at a build for a second and predicts everything that's going to happen, then we'd see more casters who have the ability to do that.
We've certainly selected for casters with a lot more game understanding over the years
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On May 23 2020 20:37 Alejandrisha wrote:
this has been debated since release. upon release we had a bunch of idiot casters who knew nothing about the game and made money off of the release and they are not here any more. now, we generally have ex pros or casters that have been around long enough to understand the game and they are helped by other pros. these days if you do not know the game well, people will leave your stream in droves for making silly assertions
I dunno. Tasteless making silly assertions is kinda his thing! :D
Also, ZG and Wardi are "new" and not ex-pros. Rifkin has been terrible since forever and people still tune in. Tod, Rotti and Pig are obviously ex-pros, and are more "analytic", but generally need someone next to them to keep the conversation going (the play-by-play casters). Meanwhile Special is still a pro, does some casting on the side and is absolutely hilarious; I don't think he ever analyses anything, just talks trash because the terrans are doing it all wrong all the time. I don't know much about Maynarde, but I don't really like his casting anyway.
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On May 23 2020 21:08 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2020 20:37 Alejandrisha wrote:
this has been debated since release. upon release we had a bunch of idiot casters who knew nothing about the game and made money off of the release and they are not here any more. now, we generally have ex pros or casters that have been around long enough to understand the game and they are helped by other pros. these days if you do not know the game well, people will leave your stream in droves for making silly assertions I dunno. Tasteless making silly assertions is kinda his thing! :D Also, ZG and Wardi are "new" and not ex-pros. Rifkin has been terrible since forever and people still tune in. Tod, Rotti and Pig are obviously ex-pros, and are more "analytic", but generally need someone next to them to keep the conversation going (the play-by-play casters). Meanwhile Special is still a pro, does some casting on the side and is absolutely hilarious; I don't think he ever analyses anything, just talks trash because the terrans are doing it all wrong all the time. I don't know much about Maynarde, but I don't really like his casting anyway.
tasteless gets grandfathered in by his better half, same for the last 10 years of sc2 lol
i would say zg and wardi fall in to the category of having been around long enough to know at least something. it's different at this point rather than at the beginning. zg seems adequate in game knowledge. wardi i don't really know.. haven't watched much of his casts but i do know he has been on top of the foreign scene for a long time. the difference is the idiots i am referring to didn't even bother to try to get good at the game.
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EPT
