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While the Korean scene has definitely struggled a lot lately, I don‘t think the season finals are a good indicator here.
1. Break: GSL is what the Korean scene is all about. With the last season of the year being over, many Koreans simply took a break. We heard from some sources that some Korean players that played the season finals came into the tournament more or less unprepared. And I‘m not blaming them whatsoever, especially in a year like this, the value of such season finals is not that big, in my opinion.
2. Servers: even if it did not affect the matches themselves, I could imagine that the server discussion de-valued the tournament from a Korean perspective. It‘s just not the same and one of the players HAS to be given a disasvantage over a best of 3/5/7. And obviously it takes something away from the sincerety of the tournament.
3. Playtime: Again, probably no major affect on the outcome, but most definitely an effect on the perception of the tournament. I cannot imagine someone taking a tournament truly serious if he has to play far past midnight. It is obvious why the times were chosen that way, but Koreans were definitely put in the worst position among all players.
In an offline tournament, I would still see Koreans outperform the Europeans (minus Clem, Serral, Reynor) by quite a margin. And I hope the Katowice can take place as an offline event next spring.
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What region lock? This year pretty much didn't have any region lock. It's not ESL's fault that some Koreans have a "don't care" attitude when it comes to season finals. It's also not ESL's fault that NA servers seem to suck this year, so cross region play is suboptimal
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I don't think you understand what "rock bottom" is. Rock bottom is the point where the pain overcomes whatever you are doing to keep the pain at bay and you are forced to make changes in your life. It's a rock because the pain stops you from sinking further. Believe me, nothing is stopping Korean SC2 from sinking further.
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The results from the season finals do indicate korean sc2 has hit rock bottom in the context of being in the worst place ever compared to other regions. Korea has never before been this not-dominating. You can say anything you want about breaks and laps in motivation but the fact is both GSL finalists got stomped on by the rest of the world. Only Stats had a good showing.
No one has been saying that korea as a sc2 region is as strong as before, them losing domination is something we have known for a long time and as others have said they will probably keep dropping as time goes by. A new low though yes
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On November 17 2020 19:38 Shuffleblade wrote:
You can say anything you want about breaks and laps in motivation but the fact is both GSL finalists got stomped on by the rest of the world. Only Stats had a good showing.
"breaks and laps in motivation" are both pretty glaring factors though. TY was literally streaming BW all week after the GSL final (he's still streaming now even) and Maru apparently (and presumably, due to injuries) hasn't played at all.
An online weekender isn't going to be priority over GSL for these guys, but it's the most important event foreigners have. What did you expect?
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Go back go HotS, the sheer amount of different ,maps, styles, compositions, build orders and mindgames will increase strategic variability. Koreans would dominate again in such environment.
LOTV made the game streamlined in some senses. Applying to most races, yet more true for Terran and Protoss, the game becomes too much of a question of mastering tactics rather than overall strategic planning, outthinking and outperforming throughout a series of games.
Some foreigners would still be able to go on par with koreans, but if they were to go back to HotS the gap between foreigners and koreans would expand again.
Just my opinion.
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On November 17 2020 19:51 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 19:38 Shuffleblade wrote:
You can say anything you want about breaks and laps in motivation but the fact is both GSL finalists got stomped on by the rest of the world. Only Stats had a good showing. "breaks and laps in motivation" are both pretty glaring factors though. TY was literally streaming BW all week after the GSL final (he's still streaming now even) and Maru apparently (and presumably, due to injuries) hasn't played at all. An online weekender isn't going to be priority over GSL for these guys, but it's the most important event foreigners have. What did you expect?
Yeah of course, if the two latest GSL finalists took a few weeks off getting crushed by EU and NA players is expected, I am sure 5 years ago not a single korean ever had a break or a lap in motivation.
Some players ahve their best results after taking some space from the game, it is known many top tier players don't practise like hell every day. It varies.
It is so strange to me, Neeb 3-0 the recent GSL champion and thats expected because of lack of motivation? Is that what this game is about now, the playuer with most motivation wins its not about skill.
What did I expect? I expected the best players to win, maybe thats what happened, which means we are looking at a huge change in how not dominated korea is compared to the rest of the world.
How come koreans can win every single time in the old days, it was expected, a loss to a foreigner was a huge deal. No matter how unmotivated, jetlagged or sick he was. When a foreigner won, guess what, no one said "I guess X was just unmotivated".
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France12891 Posts
To answer the thread, you can only see if that’s the case in offline events to be honest. Nothing has changed in foreigners vs Koreans compared to 2019, except that now Clem probably has a good shot vs them offline too (especially zergs).
No new blood because sc2 isn’t as popular as LoL/BW doesn’t help either, but the current gen of KR pros can hold till the end of the ESL contract...
only question is if vaccine or something will allow us to have offline tourneys before this contract ends ; or if the current situation will affect the contract in the first place.
If GSL stops next year, depending on what ESL has to bring for the Koreans, some / a lot might stop their career so that would actually be rock bottom in that case.
About the Neeb vs TY: TvP is difficult, TY played BW and it’s cross server low stakes (for already IEM qualified Koreans) tournament. Remember Neeb beating Serral online right before his BlizzCon win? Same thing really.
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On November 17 2020 20:30 Shuffleblade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 19:51 Fango wrote:On November 17 2020 19:38 Shuffleblade wrote:
You can say anything you want about breaks and laps in motivation but the fact is both GSL finalists got stomped on by the rest of the world. Only Stats had a good showing. "breaks and laps in motivation" are both pretty glaring factors though. TY was literally streaming BW all week after the GSL final (he's still streaming now even) and Maru apparently (and presumably, due to injuries) hasn't played at all. An online weekender isn't going to be priority over GSL for these guys, but it's the most important event foreigners have. What did you expect? Yeah of course, if the two latest GSL finalists took a few weeks off getting crushed by EU and NA players is expected, I am sure 5 years ago not a single korean ever had a break or a lap in motivation. Some players ahve their best results after taking some space from the game, it is known many top tier players don't practise like hell every day. It varies. It is so strange to me, Neeb 3-0 the recent GSL champion and thats expected because of lack of motivation? Is that what this game is about now, the playuer with most motivation wins its not about skill.
TY literally spent the last 2 weeks streaming broodwar all day. You can be mad at him for not going straight back to the practice routine if you want. But it doesn't change the fact that the most important event for him was GSL, and the final just happened. He's going to take a break.
Hell, how many times have you seen TY and Maru two do great in GSL then bomb out of smaller events right after? There's a reason those two barely play in online events unless they're straight up invited to them as well.
Dreamhack is the #1 event for foreigners. They're going to put all their preperation into it because they have nothing else to really practice for. This isn't 2014, there are more than 2 foreigners actually practicing and playing full time now, they're going to beat two guys who care so little they'd only played BW for 2 weeks or straight up not play at all.
And these are actual champions like Clem and Neeb as well, not random NA/EU scrubs.
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France12891 Posts
Also when you think about it, Stats being the Koreans performing best in this tournament is not very surprising considering he will have to retire soon.
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Northern Ireland25618 Posts
On November 17 2020 14:44 Jealous wrote:
Also, the reason for Korean SC2's decline are (not in order of importance):
1. Jingoism.
2. Xenophobia.
3. Life's match fixing - and all of the bullshit that happened after.
4. SC2 not being BW.
5. Region lock.
6. Blizzard's decision-making (this is sorta a combination of the previous points).
Like, many of these obstacles were (and still are) actively propped up by the community, as can be readily seen in this and other threads. Is it really any surprise that a wounded giraffe is bleeding out and barely able to move - while many on TL are the metaphorical hyenas waiting to feast on the corpse? There are some posters, and you know well who you are, who are downright ecstatic at the relative rise of foreigners to their Korean counterparts regardless of what the underlying reasons for this gap being bridged are... Because all that matters is your hometown hero had a chance at European Local 2017 and now you can say your favorite player is the tallest animal in the world after consistently cheering for death of the giraffe.
I don’t really think that’s fair at all. Perhaps I’m biased from my rl friends and basically only browsing TL, where the general tenor seems to both be happy at the emergence of S tier foreigners while bemoaning the decline of the Korean scene, Proleague etc etc.
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On November 17 2020 14:44 Jealous wrote:
Also, the reason for Korean SC2's decline are (not in order of importance):
1. Jingoism.
2. Xenophobia.
3. Life's match fixing - and all of the bullshit that happened after.
4. SC2 not being BW.
5. Region lock.
6. Blizzard's decision-making (this is sorta a combination of the previous points).
Like, many of these obstacles were (and still are) actively propped up by the community, as can be readily seen in this and other threads. Is it really any surprise that a wounded giraffe is bleeding out and barely able to move - while many on TL are the metaphorical hyenas waiting to feast on the corpse? There are some posters, and you know well who you are, who are downright ecstatic at the relative rise of foreigners to their Korean counterparts regardless of what the underlying reasons for this gap being bridged are... Because all that matters is your hometown hero had a chance at European Local 2017 and now you can say your favorite player is the tallest animal in the world after consistently cheering for death of the giraffe.
Well said. This is why I can't really stand people hyping up foreigners catching up to koreans currently.
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The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 17 2020 21:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 14:44 Jealous wrote:
Also, the reason for Korean SC2's decline are (not in order of importance):
1. Jingoism.
2. Xenophobia.
3. Life's match fixing - and all of the bullshit that happened after.
4. SC2 not being BW.
5. Region lock.
6. Blizzard's decision-making (this is sorta a combination of the previous points).
Like, many of these obstacles were (and still are) actively propped up by the community, as can be readily seen in this and other threads. Is it really any surprise that a wounded giraffe is bleeding out and barely able to move - while many on TL are the metaphorical hyenas waiting to feast on the corpse? There are some posters, and you know well who you are, who are downright ecstatic at the relative rise of foreigners to their Korean counterparts regardless of what the underlying reasons for this gap being bridged are... Because all that matters is your hometown hero had a chance at European Local 2017 and now you can say your favorite player is the tallest animal in the world after consistently cheering for death of the giraffe. I don’t really think that’s fair at all. Perhaps I’m biased from my rl friends and basically only browsing TL, where the general tenor seems to both be happy at the emergence of S tier foreigners while bemoaning the decline of the Korean scene, Proleague etc etc.
Well the Korean scene is dead and has been for years. If they wanted to do anything, they should have when it was alive and being killed while they were trying to save the NA as the EU scene was fine(Koreans were living and playing there, which was the point). Then Blizzard had the genius idea about region locking Koreans because Koreans are genetically superior to foreigners and NOBODY important voiced against it. It was fine. And it was mostly about the NA scene, let's admit it. Let's forward few years to the now point. NA scene is dead, Korean scene is dead and some people are shocked. Not like people were warning about this.
But it's too late to change anything anyway. The Korean scene will hit rock bottom once the Code S is officially over, we're 6 seasons from it, maybe less, depends on the region locking plan of Apollo, which is like having a plan to save the Titanic when it broke apart and is almost sunk.
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On November 17 2020 21:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2020 14:44 Jealous wrote:
Also, the reason for Korean SC2's decline are (not in order of importance):
1. Jingoism.
2. Xenophobia.
3. Life's match fixing - and all of the bullshit that happened after.
4. SC2 not being BW.
5. Region lock.
6. Blizzard's decision-making (this is sorta a combination of the previous points).
Like, many of these obstacles were (and still are) actively propped up by the community, as can be readily seen in this and other threads. Is it really any surprise that a wounded giraffe is bleeding out and barely able to move - while many on TL are the metaphorical hyenas waiting to feast on the corpse? There are some posters, and you know well who you are, who are downright ecstatic at the relative rise of foreigners to their Korean counterparts regardless of what the underlying reasons for this gap being bridged are... Because all that matters is your hometown hero had a chance at European Local 2017 and now you can say your favorite player is the tallest animal in the world after consistently cheering for death of the giraffe. I don’t really think that’s fair at all. Perhaps I’m biased from my rl friends and basically only browsing TL, where the general tenor seems to both be happy at the emergence of S tier foreigners while bemoaning the decline of the Korean scene, Proleague etc etc.
Well to be fair, that might be the general tenor on SC2 TL because the points raised by Jealous made the people with the opposing view go away. I stopped watching SC2 when region lock started to become a thing (and LotV completely killed sc2 for me).
Like me, many people that just wanted great games and didnt care about the flags next to the players names were slowly filtered out by being unable to tune in to what we wanted to watch, but instead only being able to frequently watch something that left us with a meh taste at the end.
To simplify my view, had region lock never happened, probably the current crowd watching SC2 would have the opposite general tenor of what you see now in TL, as the people that wanted to see their foreigner heroes regardless, would have been slowly filtered out of the spectator pool over time. Same applies to people who rather watch WoL or HotS over LotV over time they are gone, so you get nobody saying that today. but one cannot conclude from that that nobody wanted that, people were just pushed away.
I dont see it as right or wrong or even better or wose, just that current viewers are a direct consequence of evolution of the game and scene, thus it is not surprising that after all this time views of the current viewers are aligned.
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On November 17 2020 05:59 MockHamill wrote:
The single best moment in SC2 history was when Serral won Blizzcon. Why? Because he demonstrated to other foreigners that it was possible to take down the Koreans. Once the mental barrier is gone, it is gone forever.
Personally I find it awesome that the Korean dominance over SC2 has ended. They were never more talented, they just had the teamhouse advantage. Take that away and they are nothing special.
Oh please, alot of koreans weren't just better because of teamhouse. Alot of them are just that talented and put in the work as well. I only reply to this because your post seems very negative towards koreans.
Also, it's only really Serral and Reynor that truly threaten koreans. Koreans still win plenty of tournaments and the real problem to korean sc2 is the viewership and no new talent coming in.
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On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
that's very arguable. They don't practice in teamhouses anymore, multiple koreans have stated that they aren't as motivated anymore (Rogue) or that they got slower with advanced age (Inno). others struggle with injuries (Dark, Maru).
I agree that Serral, Reynor and Clem could compete in any era but it would be naive to think their winrate vs top koreans in 2015 would be as high as it is currently.
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On November 17 2020 06:58 Mizenhauer wrote:This has been almost ten years in the making. The last KeSPA rookie draft was held in 2013 and there has been almost no influx of talent since. (If you really want to dig into the drafts, 2008 was the last year that produced a bunch of championship caliber players, though 2009 had some solid players as well).
So you have a scene that was never going to get a bunch of new players for a number of reasons, (less pay/less exposure/their friends are playing lol or overwatch or whatever team game is popular/the current pros were too good) that was always inevitably going to be gutted by military service, and where players are picking up all sorts of injuries that limits the amount of time they can play and you have the perfect recipe for stagnation.You can go back if you're really curious and find the interview where Zest remarks on how he tries (and I'm am paraphrasing) "half as hard as he used to". And remember, he said that YEARS ago. Or look to 2016 when players like INnoVation or soO basically mailed it in, playing Proleague (since this was what SKT paid them to do) but not putting any effort into individual leagues. There are countless other examples of players simply not putting in the time or just coasting because they were so far ahead of the second tier of competition that it wouldn't affect their bottom line all that much. It's also worth reading some stuff Jaedong said about not enjoying sc after awhile. It's quite possible a lot of the players are just burnt out after all these years. Anyway, the INnoVation's soO's, Rogue's etc regularly reached the opening stages of individual events despite not grinding ceaselessly because they were simply so far ahead of everyone else. Players like bravo, guilty, trust, etc etc were never going to have some sudden breakthrough no matter how hard they practiced. Like I said, sc2 reached a point of stagnation a very long time ago. The result is just more obvious now that so many players have gone to military and the players in eu/na are putting more time in relative to the koreans. It has nothing to do with region lock. It has nothing to do with some collusion against the Koreans. Korean sc2 was always destined to reach this point and the life matchfixing scandal simply accelerated the process by a couple of years by killing off proleague (which was already on its way out, but offered some stability to players). Even then, sc2 gave us some great games, great players, great rivalries and incredible memories. Who cares if Korean sc2 is at its lowest point? Everyone should have seen this coming years ago and the truth is it's only going to get worse. My advice is go back and watch some good games from yesteryear and celebrate the joy sc2 gave us.
For some reason noone but Waxangel quoted this. There is a lot of finer points to argue about, and it is fun doing it. But this is the center of it all.
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In terms of tournament play, I don't see a decline of skill at all. But clearly the ping favours Zerg players the most and this year for good reasons we only see tournaments where ping continues to be an issue.
I do get depressed when I watch PartinG stream and the Kr ladder can't find him any players though. Imagine being a new player, you're forced to play at a certain time of day and when you actually get good, you need to have those player connections to get any decent practice.
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On November 17 2020 21:52 Comedy wrote:
The rise of foreigners is legit. It's not like the remaining Koreans are worse in skill, or playing worse than 3-4 years ago.
Serral, Reynor, Clem would be able to go to toe to toe, win championships, vs koreans, in any era, 100%, in SC2.
There's just less koreans now than there were before.
If you honestly believe that no longer having team houses and weekly pro league matches was not the key factor behind Koreans no longer dominating, you are delusional. They were the best because they played in the most competitive environment (that includes regular offline matches + team houses + best ladder). If you take that away, they are no different from any other sc2 player in the world and shockingly enough that is what ended up happening.
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EPT
