EPTHas Korean StarCraft hit rock bottom? - Page 2
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
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jinjin5000
United States1559 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:25 deacon.frost wrote: Not sure about the talent and BW stuff. Artosis said that they get many more people trying ASL qualis than for the Code S so maybe they don't qualify but at least they try it. He said it during some of the last pylon shows(not the jeopardy one, those before, can't remember which one) numbers are naturally higher because more people play it in korea of course, but the problem is the competition. There isn't as many new people who can stay competitive against the "old" kespa pros (except Soma), and real lack of new players coming through that are young and talented. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12133 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:44 jinjin5000 wrote: numbers are naturally higher because more people play it in korea of course, but the problem is the competition. There isn't as many new people who can stay competitive against the "old" kespa pros (except Soma), and real lack of new players coming through that are young and talented. Can there be? I don't know the BW scene, but aren't it just full of former pros? That's a high bar to pass, maybe even higher than in SC2 considering SC2 natural volatility. | ||
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jinjin5000
United States1559 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:50 deacon.frost wrote: Can there be? I don't know the BW scene, but aren't it just full of former pros? That's a high bar to pass, maybe even higher than in SC2 considering SC2 natural volatility. And that's why its a problem. There isn't new blood that can challenge the current roster, much like SC2's situation. Even with larger playerbase and viewerbase, it shares the same problem due to same lack of infrastructure and support. | ||
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geokilla
Canada8255 Posts
Now keep in mind SC2 is a 10 year old game and it's only natural we don't get a lot of new players. There's way better games out there to play. How many people start playing a game by themselves? Outside of mobile games and AAA titles, people usually play games where they can play in a team environment or interact with other players and their friends. Growing up, I played Gunbound, RuneScape, MU Online, and MapleStory all because my friends played it with me. We all still play video games where we can play together. Out of all my friends, I'm the only one left playing SC2, and even then I've moved over to playing more CS:GO. If you're a foreigner looking to go competitive and become a professional, SC2 is not as popular as the other e-sports and rightfully so. You get paid more as a CS:GO or League professional with better contracts to sign and bigger prize pools. Even if you're not the best of the best, you can still sign with a tier 2 team and compete in tournaments or play in the LCS or LEC "not as good leagues." These tier 2 teams and competitions still pay a lot more than what someone would make in SC2. I can't say the same for Koreans as I don't know what Koreans play outside of League since there's no professional CS:GO team, but I'm sure a similar concept applies to the Eastern world. | ||
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Morbidius
Brazil3449 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:50 deacon.frost wrote: Can there be? I don't know the BW scene, but aren't it just full of former pros? That's a high bar to pass, maybe even higher than in SC2 considering SC2 natural volatility. Its like SC2,almost zero new talent, the difference being that no other region ever reached A team quality, lets alone S tier like Flash. BW is pretty messed up,, but unlike SC2 we had guys who could shake up the rigid hierarchy(Jangbi, Fantasy). SC2 is mostly koreans who peaked before 2015 trying to be relevant. | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:38 CicadaSC wrote: Apollo already teased region lock will be loosened next year which disproportionately effects NA. Koreans are less likely to take over the eu scene not only because the players are generally better but because for koreans to play there they have to overcome 330ms. On NA west you get 130. Rip na except Neeb, Scarlett, Astrea. What am I reading? How can you think any korean would have chances to do anything playing on EU server when online tournament on the "fairest" servers are hard fought right now? It's utter silliness to even think about that in the post Serral era. Also, I wouldn't expect removing/loosening region lock to lead to online regional tournaments allowing korean presence, it would make no sense. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1990 Posts
On November 17 2020 08:04 Xain0n wrote: What am I reading? How can you think any korean would have chances to do anything playing on EU server when online tournament on the "fairest" servers are hard fought right now? It's utter silliness to even think about that in the post Serral era. Also, I wouldn't expect removing/loosening region lock to lead to online regional tournaments allowing korean presence, it would make no sense. That's actually precisely what I said. A removal of region lock would have little to no effect on the eu scene | ||
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lolfail9001
Russian Federation40190 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:44 jinjin5000 wrote: numbers are naturally higher because more people play it in korea of course, but the problem is the competition. There isn't as many new people who can stay competitive against the "old" kespa pros (except Soma), and real lack of new players coming through that are young and talented. Tbh calling Soma 'new' is itself shows just how stagnant the water is, given that his first forays into competitive BW were evidently 8 or 9 years ago. So, looks like the problem is exact same between BW and SC2, it's just that BW is naturally bigger in Korea. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27387 Posts
The Kespa regime didn’t just breed formidable BW players, it largely kept its secrets locked within practice houses. Outsiders could see its results in action but were left merely with trying to reconstruct builds, never mind mechanical optimisations from tournament VoDs. Sure we could see what a Flash was doing, we didn’t really know how he was doing it. It did subsequently open up in the streaming era, but the gap mechanically between veteran full-time progamers and new blood is just too difficult to bridge. SC2 scene has always been much more open, plebs like me can study replays from all sorts of tournaments, with hotkey info. Never mind streaming too. And unlike BW the mechanical side of the game isn’t something unbridgeable outside of the Kespa regime. Sure it’s extremely difficult, that’s why it’s only a handful of foreigners who are mechanically the equal of Korean’s vets, but it is doable. Koreans don’t have that mechanical advantage, nor are they an unknown quantity either, there’s lots to study. Speaking of openness as it pertains to SC2, another factor is I that it’s just bigger in foreign land, which I think is a factor as well in terms of development. There’s a lot of theorycrafting, optimisation (see the Core, although few pros use it iirc) and just general discussion and development of the game that occurs where the audience is, and it’s largely the foreign scene and its largely in English too. The foreign scene seems to have pushed on a little in terms of small optimisations. Outside of a few situations like stutter stepping backwards mouse scrolling is probably just outright better than the more common scrolling of the edge of the screen, but it’s mostly foreign players I’ve seen thus far adopting it. In a scene where players are largely practicing and thinking about the game semi-independently, that’s actually a pretty big resource advantage for foreign players. We have examples of Koreans doing this, usually a player doing a Catz build or Parting doing the MaxPax, but they’re probably so notable that I remember them because they’re relatively rare (at least in being acknowledged). Whereas a foreign pro is exposed to a lot more of this on a daily basis. | ||
Poopi
France13018 Posts
On November 17 2020 06:56 dbRic1203 wrote: Katowice is the real Test, I give All the Korean elitists and apologists that one. The EPT season Finals where nice and all that, but in the end the world champion is crowned offline, at Katowice. Still the top 20 in the world is way more than half KR. We have maybe 8-10 foreigners in top 30 and Down from there, there are quite a lot more foreigners, just because there are so many more Players in the world outside of Korean than in that tinny country Too bad though that it's not guaranteed to be offline... If it's online the cross server games will be kinda meaningless :| | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27387 Posts
On November 17 2020 08:37 Poopi wrote: Too bad though that it's not guaranteed to be offline... If it's online the cross server games will be kinda meaningless :| For sure. If it comes to it honestly I’d rather them just push it back a bit and tweak the calendar than us end up with a de facto world championship played with conditions that aren’t optimal for the players. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12535 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:25 deacon.frost wrote: How will removing the region lock help developing the Korean scene exactly? In no ways most likely. Still an extremely trash thing that we did and it should be removed. | ||
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Anc13nt
1557 Posts
Players like Maru, TY and Rogue usually care more if there is a big prize pool so they don't do as well in most weekenders/online tournaments. Another big issue for Koreans this year is that players like Dark and Maru are a little bit less serious this year, probably because they don't want to risk injuries. It's possible to me that they decided, since they are still pretty young, it would be a good idea to put health first this year when stakes are a bit lower (since most tournaments are online and don't have huge prize pools). So considering these factors, even though players like Stats, INnoVation, Zest and soO will retire, I think they will perform better next year. They still have Maru, Trap, Rogue, Dark and TY who have collectively won I'm guessing like 80%+ of all Korean tournaments for the past few years. | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
There was just a whole generation of potential progamers in Korea focusing their efforts on Starcraft and rightfully so, since the game was immensely popular, well paid and treated like a real sport. These players then transitioned to Sc2; not only KeSpa's players, but also youngsters who lived in the myth of BW as an esport and tried their luck in Sc2 once it came out(Maru, Life, Creator were too young to be recruited but also TaeJa and Polt did not play BW and had great success in Sc2). Despite the almost total majority of both Warcraft 3 and Brood War non korean scenes transitioning to Sc2, there just wasn't the infostructure to compete against koreans; they were better at the top and many more at mid/high level. During HoTS, especially the latter were actively suppressing the growth of the foreign scene by going oversea to just win tournaments; only few were actually residing and laddering in the region they chose to play in. That's why Blizzard decided for the region lock and that's not why the korean scene in Korea fell. KeSpa collapsed without Blizzard having any role in it; the far future of korean Sc2, in retrospective, was doomed once it happened, The game was never as popular and as appreciated as Brood War in Korea and, without teamhouses nurturing new talents and other esports being more widespread and more appealing, evidently there was no more interest for new players to start or keep playing Sc2 at low level. On the other hand, region lock successfully allowed new players from outside of Korea(Europe, especially), to safely grow without facing a floor way too high for them to handle. The popularity of Sc2 and the number of aspiring new players were simply higher outside of Korea so that the interest in the game persisted even against the already mentioned potentially more appealing esports. Now, in 2020, there still exists an influx of promising teen players so that sc2 as a high profile esport will most likely end not because of lack of new blood but because of lack of funds. | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On November 17 2020 06:42 deacon.frost wrote: Foreigners dominated every... King of Battles. But... Stats was second, but... of all the rock bottom Koreans only 1 lost WC titles... but! BUT... in the top 20 there are like 15 Koreans... Sure, talent is leaving and no new is coming, especially visible it is at the Protoss where no foreigner can do anything substantial(like win a bigger tournament) nor Korean kongs. Oh noez, Maru ended last after he finished 2nd and won a tournament. WHAT A DISASTER! TY was beaten by a NA runner up. After he spent streaming BW more time than preparing for this tournament(if any time was put into the preparation)... oh noez, Cure didn't deliver and didn't beat Serral again. Oh, wait, Cure wasn't here. Rogue didn't deliveR! Blame the patch zerg. Wait, he wasn't here either. Damn... blame Classic and military!  Edit> Oh noez, it appears as if some Koreans are taking a break from SC2!!!! WHAT A DISASTER AND TRAGEDY. AFter a year of SC2!!!! Maybe, just maybe, they are finally getting the well earned break. While a little bit ignoring tournaments which are ignoring their timezone (or not, who knows? )Edit 2> I dare to say Korean SC2 is in the same state as 2 years ago, but with less talent which was lost to the army. Now is too late to do anything anyway. After seeing non koreans do relatively well at BlizzCon(the most prestigious and well paid international tournament) for four consecutive years, witnessing to Neeb winning KeSpa Cup and Serral dominating Sc2 for nine months, watching the foreign dominated GSL vs the World 2019 taking place in Korea and observing the meteoric growth of Clem and Reynor your best excuse for these last DH Season Finals is that koreans are distracted/not caring/playing too late in the night/not taking it serious? It can't be that we have come to the point that the disparity in average skill is low enough that tournaments like this one can happen(just as much as tournaments such KoB can)? Korean scene is dimished(in number, not in skill) now if compared to two years ago while non korean scene keeps getting better with the rise of the young ones. Reynor's and, especially, Clem's lack of experience beating top koreans offline will maybe mean that they might not perform as dominantly as they are doing online for a while but after they have adjusted I expect non koreans to obtain their best results as a whole in the next years. Removing region lock can't do anything for the growth of korean scene but wouldn't do much against the upcoming non korean players. | ||
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Solar424
United States4001 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:38 CicadaSC wrote: Apollo already teased region lock will be loosened next year which disproportionately effects NA. Koreans are less likely to take over the eu scene not only because the players are generally better but because for koreans to play there they have to overcome 330ms. On NA west you get 130. Rip na except Neeb, Scarlett, Astrea. This is exactly why NA has historically suffered in SC2. There was a brief period in 2010-2011 where NA had tournaments like MLG and IPL, then Koreans started coming over and then the scene was destroyed. Meanwhile EU had Dreamhack and IEM that had smaller prize pools that paid out to more than the top 8 that most Koreans didn't attend, so they could actually make a living playing the game. WCS NA killed whatever was left, by the Ro8 the only NA player left was usually Scarlett. | ||
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geokilla
Canada8255 Posts
On November 17 2020 08:37 Poopi wrote: Too bad though that it's not guaranteed to be offline... If it's online the cross server games will be kinda meaningless :| Given the situation in Katowice and the arena being used as a hospital, it's most definitely going to be online unless ESL flies everyone into one of their studios in Europe for offline play. But if ESL doesn't even do that for CS:GO, there's no way they'll do it for SC2. They haven't done it for any of their CS:GO tournaments as of late so I doubt they will for SC2. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20344 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:38 CicadaSC wrote: Apollo already teased region lock will be loosened next year which disproportionately effects NA. Koreans are less likely to take over the eu scene not only because the players are generally better but because for koreans to play there they have to overcome 330ms. On NA west you get 130. Rip na except Neeb, Scarlett, Astrea. It's not quite that bad, the game server is like 15ms along the line from me to seoul ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/ag3jILW.png) | ||
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SickeL
110 Posts
On November 17 2020 07:34 deacon.frost wrote: Funny thing, there was a time when many Koreans were living in the Europe and playing on the European ladder. I wonder what drove them away (and I honestly believe that if the rules were more subtle we would have had many more foreigners being good much earlier)100% agree: Thorzain when Koreans were in Europe was as good as Clem is now, IMHO. | ||
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