On November 20 2020 10:39 RKC wrote: It's debatable whether post-KeSPA* period can be considered peak SC2. The assumption is that the players really level up as years go by. While that may be true to any mature sport or game in general, the counter factors are the disbandment of teamhouses, lower viewership, dilution of player pool, and so on.
BW is the perfect analogy. Is ASL post-KeSPA peak BW? Likely not. I recall a recent Flash interview 1-2 years back. The question was whether Flash-present was better than Flash-past during the KeSPA days. His answer was rather enlightening. In the short term or short series - yes, he would beat Flash-past because of the new knowledge gained in recent years through mind-games. But if you gave Flash-past some time to learn the new meta and knowlege - no, Flash-past would absolutely demolish him. Of course, he's probably factoring that his mechanical skills are getting rustier with age. But I think the same general principle can apply to most BW pros.
Back to SC2 - Are foreigners playing better than any period before? That's a tough question. But the fact that they have an impressive record of beating Korean 'old hats' proves little (in the GOAT discussion context). Just like how no one can safely say that Soma beating Flash proves that Soma would've beaten peak Flash, neither can anyone safely say that Serral and Reynor would have beaten peak Rain, Inno, the-Zerg-that-shalt-not-be-named, and so on.
Ultimately, it's quite evident that the Korean SC2 is in decline. The only question is how far they have fallen from their pedestal (and brought down the overall quality and competitiveness of the game as a consequence).
* not sure when exactly the dividing line is - the death of Prologue?
No, Brood War definitely is not a perfect analogy. Starcraft 2 was not abandoned completely for four years by the same apparatus you seem to consider so important when it comes to the competitiveness of the game; also, Sc2's players who are now competing at the top are not the same ones who used to dominate ten years ago, only ten years older.
Top foreigners are better than ever before, only Stephano and Neeb achieved a similar status in the past when it comes to competitiveness against top koreans but Serral is obviously above them and we now have other two who are on pair with his current skill and the potential to be on equal footing against the best koreans(Reynor partly did, already, while Clem hasn't even started yet). I actually believe that foreign scene in early LoTV had higher density and was more uniform in skill making it pleasantly unpredictable while already showcasing a level good enough to challenge koreans ,despite not having top players so strong to beat those on a regular basis.
Watch SC2 while you can, I honestly don't see ESL/DH or sponsors footing the bill for prize pools that pros are used to. I do hope a movement happens, but I don't see it honestly with the sc / sc2 community; that window to capture new people in a significant amount passed long ago. Which is important, because a bigger audience attracts more new player blood, affects all sc2 regions.
On November 17 2020 07:09 jinjin5000 wrote: the big worry for Korean SC2 is that there is no real viewership combined with no new blood.
The lack of new blood has been talked of recently in Snow's interview series with TY & Stats and they address this very issue saying that it is big worry they are not seeing anyone new around that can challenge the current pro level/lead the next generation. Combine this with the looming defunding from Blizzard on Korean SC2 tournaments, there is going to be big gap between tournaments Koreans can participate in and the next one, only really filled in by online tournaments. With GSL being gone, I can see many of the current roster moving to coaching another esports like League/ moving on to BW streaming/ retiring.
As TY & Stats also mentioned, Life's matchfixing accelerated this process and dismantling of the Kespa teams preventing recruitment of new talent just stopped Korean SC2 in tracks. Combine that with low viewership and interest means this was really inevitable.
Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] + Show Spoiler +
There is more viewership from korea stuff htan for foreigenr stuff no?
Specially in the youtube vods no?
If i am wrong please correct me.
The problem is that even with big viewership, there isnt any new blood coming in to challenge the current top pros in bw
Unless you mean sc2, then it has much, much more foreign views than koreans
Sorry I express myself terrible, what I wanted to say is that in youtube a vod with a korean player in it draw much more viewership than a match between foreigners.
On November 17 2020 07:09 jinjin5000 wrote: the big worry for Korean SC2 is that there is no real viewership combined with no new blood.
The lack of new blood has been talked of recently in Snow's interview series with TY & Stats and they address this very issue saying that it is big worry they are not seeing anyone new around that can challenge the current pro level/lead the next generation. Combine this with the looming defunding from Blizzard on Korean SC2 tournaments, there is going to be big gap between tournaments Koreans can participate in and the next one, only really filled in by online tournaments. With GSL being gone, I can see many of the current roster moving to coaching another esports like League/ moving on to BW streaming/ retiring.
As TY & Stats also mentioned, Life's matchfixing accelerated this process and dismantling of the Kespa teams preventing recruitment of new talent just stopped Korean SC2 in tracks. Combine that with low viewership and interest means this was really inevitable.
Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] + Show Spoiler +
There is more viewership from korea stuff htan for foreigenr stuff no?
Specially in the youtube vods no?
If i am wrong please correct me.
The problem is that even with big viewership, there isnt any new blood coming in to challenge the current top pros in bw
Unless you mean sc2, then it has much, much more foreign views than koreans
Sorry I express myself terrible, what I wanted to say is that in youtube a vod with a korean player in it draw much more viewership than a match between foreigners.
If the Korean scene crumbles, it is a disaster for the SC2 scene in general. Foreigners won't keep people entertained, historically the best viewership is when there's a foreigner against a Korean, preferably offline. Once we lose this(and we will), the viewership will go downhill faster than the value of the Zimbabwean dollar.
At some point, SC2 is going to be come the next WC3 as far as Esports goes. It's inevitable. It may ebb and flow up and down a couple more times though.
And AFAIK, the current WC3 scene is pretty much just Grubby's stream, sometimes playing against other ex-wc3 pros like Thorzain/Happy, etc, and no real corporate subsidized tournaments.
On November 23 2020 02:31 Sadistx wrote: At some point, SC2 is going to be come the next WC3 as far as Esports goes. It's inevitable. It may ebb and flow up and down a couple more times though.
And AFAIK, the current WC3 scene is pretty much just Grubby's stream, sometimes playing against other ex-wc3 pros like Thorzain/Happy, etc, and no real corporate subsidized tournaments.
you know absolutely nothing about the WC3 scene then lmao.. Grubby not even playing in any tournaments
ESL WC3 Championship actually going on right now, too btw
There are tournaments basically every day. European, korean and chinese ones. Corporate sponsored or community sponsored. It's a really healthy scene that would have been even healthier if not for COVID and Bli$$ard fucking up the remaster.
It's quite small, yes.. but still very enjoyable and you will not be able to watch everything even if you would want to.
As always in this discussion one has to consider: While obviously the gap between foreign and Korean scene has diminished substantially and some foreigners are on par with top Koreans, we don't have any tournament which features global participation purely based on actual performance delivered in global competition.
What does this mean? In this regard we have 3 types of tournaments right now, in which players from all regions can participate:
1) Offline or "regional" tournaments which require big logistic investments in order to participate if you're not from that region. This is the case with GSL and Dreamhack-Master regionals. You basically have to live in the region to participate.
2) small to semibig tournaments which are totally open (or almost at least) but not attractive or just not big enough to feature all the best players. Asus Rog is such a tournament.
3) Big international tournaments with regionally distributed spots. This means that only a certain amount of players from a region can participate. For a region with few top players this is a boost, for regions with many top players this is a bottleneck. Even if great regions get more spots, they still won't be able to perform to their best potential because the players that got qualified are never the best players at the moment when the actual tournament happens. This was the case with any WCS global finals and any GSL vs The World in the past and is the case with any Dreamhack Masters Season Finals this year.
The ultimate test to my assumption has been the exceptional IEM Katowice for quite some years now. This tournament had the best combination of being a huge tournament and having a very open qualification process since 2017.
Let's have a closer look.
2017 group stage: 14 Koreans (K) - 10 foreigners (f) 2017 bracket Ro12: 10 K - 2 f 2017 bracket Ro8: 7 K - 1 f 2017 bracket Ro4: 4 K
2018 group stage: 16 K - 8 f 2018 bracket Ro12: 11 K - 1 f 2018 bracket Ro8: 7 K - 1 f 2018 bracket Ro4: 3 K - 1 f 2018 final: 2 K
2019 group stage: 18 K - 6 f 2019 bracket Ro12: 10 K - 2 f 2019 bracket Ro8: 6 K - 2 f 2019 bracket Ro4: 4 K
2020 group stage: 17 K - 7 f 2020 bracket Ro12: 10 K - 2 f 2020 bracket Ro8: 7 K - 1 f 2020 bracket Ro4: 3 K - 1 f 2020 final: 2 K
We see a significant rise in skill of few certain foreigners while from the high amount of top Koreans there will be always enough who perform and thus kick out the majority of the foreigners out of the tournament in the group stage. With Clem and Reynor catching up with Serral this year, the field might look different this year. Also it's hard to assess the new IEM Katowice format as it won't be as open this time - 9 foreigners are already set for Ro24 which is quite big, considering that they had no Korean competition to get there.
On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote: Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2?
No one is watching, have you like, ever, checked the numbers? 10k viewers for Code S during a late night/early morning in the US and working hours for Europe. (yeah, saturdays is bad) Harstem has a45k subscribers, Winter has 160k subscribers. Videos have between 10k - 25k views, older/more interesting can get over 100k.
HeroMarine right now has 1,2k viewers(1275 acording to the TL bar)
WardiTV 1,7k viewers (+- few hundred) streaming some Invitational.
Maybe you want to reword your statement, because no one watching is pretty interesting statement.
Also the community may be small, but is quite rich, which has shown during selling the ... uh... those crate things to increase the prize pools. Or when Take asked for monies to support his tourneys.
I don't blame Koreans to go to stream BW, because being a foreign streamer sucks. (bad timezone, English, SC2 )
Yeah obviously, if Koreans had better time zones, and foreigners had prime time slots, we would have 200k viewers minimum for each GSL final because the 200k BW followers for ASL would have instead watched the superior GSL. Instead, we have 10k. Must be time zones. The ratio of 20 to 1, must be time zones.
Imagine the reverse time zone, all koreans would be watching Winter (biggest streamer) instead of Flash, and GSL instead of ASL.
With the renewed popularity of Brood War and the release of SC: Remastered eventually the two scenes were going to hit a kind of "crossroads" with the Korean scene going full-bore BW and the foreigner scene staying on SC2. Now I don't reasonably expect players like Maru, ByuN, or Creator to switch to BW but many of the Korean players are heading in the direction of Brood War.
And with the uncertainty of professional play after 2022, when the Koreans return from military service there may not be much of a SC2 pro scene to return to. But Korean BW will survive well beyond 2022. Plus as been stated streaming BW on AfreecaTV can be very financially lucrative, and will likely continue to be lucrative for quite some time.
On November 18 2020 04:02 Duke_nk wrote: Everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room: No one is watching SC2, and it was kept artificially alive by Blizzard for the past years through tournament money. Now that Blizzard pulled out, which was 100 percent expected, Koreans will lose their only source of income in the next months. So what's the point in trying hard, also given that most of these guys haven't been to the military yet.
Stats, TY have already started streaming BW where the money is. When even low viewer numbers in the 100-200 gives you a stable income of 11k dollars a month through donations, why would you keep playing SC2?
No one is watching, have you like, ever, checked the numbers? 10k viewers for Code S during a late night/early morning in the US and working hours for Europe. (yeah, saturdays is bad) Harstem has a45k subscribers, Winter has 160k subscribers. Videos have between 10k - 25k views, older/more interesting can get over 100k.
HeroMarine right now has 1,2k viewers(1275 acording to the TL bar)
WardiTV 1,7k viewers (+- few hundred) streaming some Invitational.
Maybe you want to reword your statement, because no one watching is pretty interesting statement.
Also the community may be small, but is quite rich, which has shown during selling the ... uh... those crate things to increase the prize pools. Or when Take asked for monies to support his tourneys.
I don't blame Koreans to go to stream BW, because being a foreign streamer sucks. (bad timezone, English, SC2 )
Yeah obviously, if Koreans had better time zones, and foreigners had prime time slots, we would have 200k viewers minimum for each GSL final because the 200k BW followers for ASL would have instead watched the superior GSL. Instead, we have 10k. Must be time zones. The ratio of 20 to 1, must be time zones.
Imagine the reverse time zone, all koreans would be watching Winter (biggest streamer) instead of Flash, and GSL instead of ASL.
What now? How did you get this of my post? oO What drugs do you take? If Koreans had a better timezones, they would be streaming in their prime time to the foreigners. There's nowhere written in my posts that Koreans are not watching SC2 because of timezones, stop deducing what I think and read what I write.
[B] Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] [spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2[/spoiler]
Is it possible that the supporting infrastructure (Team) will ever return?
[B] Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] [spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2[/spoiler]
Is it possible that the supporting infrastructure (Team) will ever return?
Nope, mostly thanks to the matchfixing scandal around Life, there are no big companies, that want to even touch SC2.
BW is part of Korean culture and other, newer games are more exciting. In Korea, if you play RTS, you play BW, if not you play a completly different game. There is no market for SC2 in terms of new players, new audience or new sponsors. So there are no teams coming up either.
SC2 is pretty big in China, though. The CTC has done wonders and has supoosedly KESPA level payouts for the top Players. If there is something, carrying the Korean SC2 scene, it s that more than anything else. Afaik, they don t have team houses though.
[B] Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] [spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2[/spoiler]
Is it possible that the supporting infrastructure (Team) will ever return?
Nope, mostly thanks to the matchfixing scandal around Life, there are no big companies, that want to even touch SC2.
BW is part of Korean culture and other, newer games are more exciting. In Korea, if you play RTS, you play BW, if not you play a completly different game. There is no market for SC2 in terms of new players, new audience or new sponsors. So there are no teams coming up either.
SC2 is pretty big in China, though. The CTC has done wonders and has supoosedly KESPA level payouts for the top Players. If there is something, carrying the Korean SC2 scene, it s that more than anything else. Afaik, they don t have team houses though.
Oh that's interesting I totally forgot about china, could that be the new home for Premier Sc2 if GSL falls apart after the 2-year deal? I actually haven't tuned into any of the recent Team league things, mainly cuz in the past, the china tournaments had poor promotion of their event or inconsistent production quality. Has that changed?
Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] [spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2[/spoiler]
Is it possible that the supporting infrastructure (Team) will ever return?
Nope, mostly thanks to the matchfixing scandal around Life, there are no big companies, that want to even touch SC2.
BW is part of Korean culture and other, newer games are more exciting. In Korea, if you play RTS, you play BW, if not you play a completly different game. There is no market for SC2 in terms of new players, new audience or new sponsors. So there are no teams coming up either.
SC2 is pretty big in China, though. The CTC has done wonders and has supoosedly KESPA level payouts for the top Players. If there is something, carrying the Korean SC2 scene, it s that more than anything else. Afaik, they don t have team houses though.
Funny thing, the scandal around Life is bad and companies won't touch SC2, but somewhow the BW matchfixing scandal isn't an issue? I agree on everything else, just find pretty weird the treatment.
I for one will enjoy the 2 more years of Starcraft we have. After that, who knows. Maybe something else will fill the RTS void, mabye not.
I completely understand that young blood is rather playing LoL / Dota. There is way more exposure, money and it isn't on a timer (yet). It is easier to get in and get hooked compared to Starcraft IMO. You can play it with your friends and get them in, too
[B] Hell, even BW, which still has big following in Korea has this very same problem with lack of new blood (other than Soma). If game with much bigger viewerbase is struggling and looking likely to be on the tail end due to lack of new blood due to there being no supportive infrastructure (teams), SC2 would go the same path as well.
[link to the translated interview with TY & Stats on this issue (ENG sub on CC)] [spoiler]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPig5JWrPos&list=PLdqi0o4auh2HWTaLfI33PCPwiD6yk02N6&index=2[/spoiler]
Is it possible that the supporting infrastructure (Team) will ever return?
Nope, mostly thanks to the matchfixing scandal around Life, there are no big companies, that want to even touch SC2.
BW is part of Korean culture and other, newer games are more exciting. In Korea, if you play RTS, you play BW, if not you play a completly different game. There is no market for SC2 in terms of new players, new audience or new sponsors. So there are no teams coming up either.
SC2 is pretty big in China, though. The CTC has done wonders and has supoosedly KESPA level payouts for the top Players. If there is something, carrying the Korean SC2 scene, it s that more than anything else. Afaik, they don t have team houses though.
I would question about the Chinese scene, there are not really much grass root players in China anymore, just SCBOY with bunch of rich friends who are throwing money around?
Rarely anyone young is playing SC2 at all. When I went to the net cafes in China, I was the only one who even bothered to open SC2. I went to a lot of them, and that was pretty much the case.
Wait 1 or 2 years, Stats, Rogue, Dark, TY, etc will all leave for the military service, and there are no Reynor or Clem to fill up the spot. If GSL is still running, we would see 5K MMR making it to the Ro16.
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