EPTI'm surprised Doublelift follows SC2 so closely and WCS back when he was a pro on TSM and TL. He talks about the 200 ping games from back then and how SC2 died due to Blizzard's incompetence. Now Clem, Reynor and Serral winning is a big deal because the competition is not as fierce as before, which I honestly agree.
Doublelift on State of SC2 and the Various Regions
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geokilla
Canada7990 Posts
I'm surprised Doublelift follows SC2 so closely and WCS back when he was a pro on TSM and TL. He talks about the 200 ping games from back then and how SC2 died due to Blizzard's incompetence. Now Clem, Reynor and Serral winning is a big deal because the competition is not as fierce as before, which I honestly agree. | ||
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Agh
United States766 Posts
The biggest issue with WCS was that it was introduced way too late. The only consistent money players were making prior was through coaching or streaming, and that market started to dry up quickly. For the game as a whole it's tough to point the finger at one particular thing. Some things off the top of my head: Gamebreakingly exploitive maps, and mathematically broken units that remained in the game for months before they were addressed. Pretty much every ounce of feedback to better the game was ignored. Not public forums or balance whining, genuine issues with the game from tournament players that they asked for and gathered privately. Less polarizing combat and trying to move away from instantaneous game ending levels of damage, instead we get the widow mine (and later Disruptors/Lurkers). At a certain point spending 10 minutes in a game that can be erased or ended in 5 seconds outweighs the fun gained, and your overall enjoyment gained sits in the negative. SC2 is probably one of the only few e-sports titles that keeps players playing it just because they're good at it, not because they enjoy it or think that it is a fun game. | ||
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jodljodl
93 Posts
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serendipitous
Canada182 Posts
On July 04 2022 14:41 Agh wrote: Less polarizing combat and trying to move away from instantaneous game ending levels of damage, instead we get the widow mine (and later Disruptors/Lurkers). At a certain point spending 10 minutes in a game that can be erased or ended in 5 seconds outweighs the fun gained, and your overall enjoyment gained sits in the negative. This is one of biggest issues with SC2 imo. The game simply isn't fun because of the insane level of focus and stress you go through having to respond to all the "game ending moments," that are built into the game. It's pretty common to see pros die to game ending moments, maybe they used a scan right before dt's came in or got hit by a big disruptor shot or lost 16 probes to a mine drop. Those game ending moments happen much more often the lower you are and it can make lots of SC2 games feel futile. If there is anything to be learned from SC2, it's that you can't just design a game entirely around being an esport. You need players and you need to make the game fun for plenty of people to get those players. Blizzard was leaning towards this at one point by trying to make things like disruptors less volatile and nerfing strategies that were op at low levels (even if they weren't at high levels.) But by then it was too late, and it couldn't be done without a large commitment to change the entire design of the game. | ||
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daskleinehotte
Germany68 Posts
Longevity is another point I have trouble with. In my opinion it speaks for the game, that after nearly twelve years there is still a healthy scene - yes, smaller and less competitive - but at least somewhat sustainable for some more years. I never understood why we always compared ourselves with other esport genres and did so little appreciation for how long SC2 is already present. In the meantime we have +100 significant LAN-Events all over the world, I think everyone involved did a fantastic job in keeping everything going for so long. To keep it short: StarCraft 2 has its place in the scene and I don´t care if it is in the limelight of the esports scene or not. | ||
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Blargh
United States1956 Posts
On July 04 2022 15:35 serendipitous wrote: This is one of biggest issues with SC2 imo. The game simply isn't fun because of the insane level of focus and stress you go through having to respond to all the "game ending moments," that are built into the game. It's pretty common to see pros die to game ending moments, maybe they used a scan right before dt's came in or got hit by a big disruptor shot or lost 16 probes to a mine drop. Those game ending moments happen much more often the lower you are and it can make lots of SC2 games feel futile. If there is anything to be learned from SC2, it's that you can't just design a game entirely around being an esport. You need players and you need to make the game fun for plenty of people to get those players. Blizzard was leaning towards this at one point by trying to make things like disruptors less volatile and nerfing strategies that were op at low levels (even if they weren't at high levels.) But by then it was too late, and it couldn't be done without a large commitment to change the entire design of the game. I don't think SC2 was ever designed around it being solely an esport. It wound up being a bit of a compromise. You can tell because Blizz was (is???) still so reluctant to give a PINGLESS copy of the game to TOs to use in... professional competitions... But I do agree that the game is simply inaccessible to the majority of people. I had a friend who would play League every so often come and play with me in StarCraft, and they were like, "Why am I doing all these actions when none of them are fun, I just want to shoot the stuff, not build a bunch of units so I can shoot some stuff??" It's sort of clear in hindsight that the game does not have mainstream appeal. I think it was carried partially by nostalgia from a prior era, but also just because there wasn't really a wide pool of competitive games at the time in 2011. If you tried to release something like BROODWAR in 2022? Not a soul would even play it. Ignoring our attachment to Starcraft (1 or 2), that type of masochistic game is completely out of style. Everyone would shit on it, "why do I have to control every unit, why is there a cap on units in a control group, etc etc" I think the moments that really made competition fun, or at least fun to watch, were those times where you saw MKP gosu microing 8 marines to kill 10 banelings, and those times where someone won solely through their amazing pick-up micro on a tank or colossus. But otherwise, you spend most of the game with minimal interactions and it's not palatable. | ||
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porisan
9 Posts
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CicadaSC
311 Posts
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Balnazza
122 Posts
Also at the time Esports started to rebounce from its bubble collaps a few years earlier and money was pumped into it again. Twitch (or rather justin.tv and own3d at the time) came around and videostreaming helped Esports SO much. And of course, SC2 had an amazing campaign and was just a really fun game overall. But now, SC2 is not only old, but also has to compete with lots of other titles and gets just slapped by team games. In general I would say (for viewers) team sports are always more popular than singles. Sure it is fun to cheer for, idk, your favorite tennis player, but when he drops out of Wimbledon first round, that kinda sucks. But cheering for your favorite team for an entire season, through all the ups and downs? Talking and speculating about the next rooster-moves? Starting to fall in love with that rookie? All of these things (and lots more) make teamgames fun and SC2 cannot compete with that. And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of money especially Riot (but basically everyone at this point) throws at their game. Blizzard also throws in lots of money, but it would not be economical at all to do it on the same scale as e.g Riot. But on the other: SC2 is still the biggest RTS out there, 10 years after its release. And ironically, the only RTS that compete with it (on a smaller scale) are even older, like WC3 or AoE2 (and SC:R in Korea). The only RTS released after SC2 that was okay-ish succesful was AoE4, but considering the expectations I think it is safe to say it flopped hard. And I'm pretty sure that whatever Frost Giant will release in who knows how many years will be having some big trouble aswell. RTS is just a difficult genre. Some mentioned the amount of stress you have during a game, which is especially true for SC2. There are just no breaks. In LoL you have lots of small breaks during a game, like when you are dead or just walking back from the shop. In CS you also have breaks, build-in moments to relax and refocus. When you relax in SC2, you basically just stop paying attention. As for vieweres, I still believe SC2 is just too chaotic. Imagine someone completly new to Esports and that person wants to give LoL and SC2 a go. When he watches LoL and knows the goal of the game, it is rather easy to follow who is up. A team being up on Gold or towers or levels is easy to understand. "Ah, the team with ultimates won the fight against the team without...I understood every word in this sentence!". Then the same person gives SC2 a try...and it is pure chaos. Terran is attacking four zerg expos at ones, loses everything and apparently is suddenly ahead?! Ah, the zerg has a huge army against that tiny Protoss thing, should be easy...and he is dead?! And how are there even two fights happening at onces?! I looked at the main armies the entire time but apparently the game winning move was a widowmine drop in one of the expos?! I honestly believe that the only chance we get for a new, succesful RTS is something along the line of WC3. Not because it is "better" than SC2 per se, but because in WC3, it is rather easy to know where to look at. The action is where the heroes are. And "looking at the supply" and hero levels alone can give you a good indicator, who is ahead. It is just so much easier to get into. Sorry for the rather unstructured post, just some of my thoughts on the matter ._. | ||
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argonautdice
Canada2402 Posts
Sure they could alter things in terms of game design, but I've been 90% happy with it since I started watching in 2012, and this is coming from someone who's never played the SC2 ladder. | ||
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argonautdice
Canada2402 Posts
On July 04 2022 16:57 daskleinehotte wrote: E.g. the early WCS situation with Korean players getting all the top spots in EU and NA. This is not totally incorrect, but he missed the fact, that they all had to (atleast partially) live in said area. Which in some cases (Polt aka Captain America) developed some interesting storylines in and of itself. I don't think they had any residency requirements in WCS 2013 and 2014 (or any WCS-affiliated tournaments like Dreamhack), so the Koreans were taking most of the top spots without living in those regions. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland17979 Posts
As said earlier, the current implementation of WCS works. It develops players because there’s a clear pathway to improving by establishing a stable pathway. A player like Serral can go from pushing to be the best in Finland, to pushing to be a solid pro, to pushing to be the best in Europe and onwards. If the barrier is, as it was having to be a top elite player out of the gate, competing against the Korean structures it’s a gamble a lot of very talented players decided not to take. Looking backwards, with the lovely benefit of hindsight the establishment of the current WCS could have happened way earlier, and you could have had the parallel regional tournaments, and have the scenes mix in those huge open weekenders like IPL or MLGs that were awesome. You could have the best of different worlds with the established elite Mecca of Starcraft, regional leagues that worked in closing the gap and the big tournaments where the best of the best and the underdogs go toe to toe. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland17979 Posts
On July 04 2022 19:57 Balnazza wrote: Starcraft 2 was released at a great time. Not only were people hyped about a new Starcraft 10+ years after the last one, but it got carried super-hard by Warcraft 3. WC3 was basically the second or third most popular Esports game for 5-8 years behind Counterstrike. It laid the groundwork for the next step, but was dying down significantly at the time (basically when SC2 was released, WC3 was kind of in the state SC2 is now, but with much less money of course). Also at the time Esports started to rebounce from its bubble collaps a few years earlier and money was pumped into it again. Twitch (or rather justin.tv and own3d at the time) came around and videostreaming helped Esports SO much. And of course, SC2 had an amazing campaign and was just a really fun game overall. But now, SC2 is not only old, but also has to compete with lots of other titles and gets just slapped by team games. In general I would say (for viewers) team sports are always more popular than singles. Sure it is fun to cheer for, idk, your favorite tennis player, but when he drops out of Wimbledon first round, that kinda sucks. But cheering for your favorite team for an entire season, through all the ups and downs? Talking and speculating about the next rooster-moves? Starting to fall in love with that rookie? All of these things (and lots more) make teamgames fun and SC2 cannot compete with that. And don't even get me started on the sheer amount of money especially Riot (but basically everyone at this point) throws at their game. Blizzard also throws in lots of money, but it would not be economical at all to do it on the same scale as e.g Riot. But on the other: SC2 is still the biggest RTS out there, 10 years after its release. And ironically, the only RTS that compete with it (on a smaller scale) are even older, like WC3 or AoE2 (and SC:R in Korea). The only RTS released after SC2 that was okay-ish succesful was AoE4, but considering the expectations I think it is safe to say it flopped hard. And I'm pretty sure that whatever Frost Giant will release in who knows how many years will be having some big trouble aswell. RTS is just a difficult genre. Some mentioned the amount of stress you have during a game, which is especially true for SC2. There are just no breaks. In LoL you have lots of small breaks during a game, like when you are dead or just walking back from the shop. In CS you also have breaks, build-in moments to relax and refocus. When you relax in SC2, you basically just stop paying attention. As for vieweres, I still believe SC2 is just too chaotic. Imagine someone completly new to Esports and that person wants to give LoL and SC2 a go. When he watches LoL and knows the goal of the game, it is rather easy to follow who is up. A team being up on Gold or towers or levels is easy to understand. "Ah, the team with ultimates won the fight against the team without...I understood every word in this sentence!". Then the same person gives SC2 a try...and it is pure chaos. Terran is attacking four zerg expos at ones, loses everything and apparently is suddenly ahead?! Ah, the zerg has a huge army against that tiny Protoss thing, should be easy...and he is dead?! And how are there even two fights happening at onces?! I looked at the main armies the entire time but apparently the game winning move was a widowmine drop in one of the expos?! I honestly believe that the only chance we get for a new, succesful RTS is something along the line of WC3. Not because it is "better" than SC2 per se, but because in WC3, it is rather easy to know where to look at. The action is where the heroes are. And "looking at the supply" and hero levels alone can give you a good indicator, who is ahead. It is just so much easier to get into. Sorry for the rather unstructured post, just some of my thoughts on the matter ._. Purely anecdotally I’ve had a relatively successful experience in watching SC along with my partners, casters doing most of the lifting and me filling in whatever gaps. And they don’t even really play games. MOBAs, I know the base mechanics and goals, played a small amount, I’ve generally found myself quite lost viewing tournaments. There’s a ton of heros and a shedload of abilities, there’s multiple players having their personal duels in lots of places. It’s rather hard to follow if you’re not au fait with the game. I think it’s much more the case that they’re less stressful and more social to play, have bigger player bases and those naturally translate to higher viewer bases. For a non-playing viewer a team game where players are doing impactful things all over the place can be hard to follow I love WC3 but of BW and SC2 I feel it’s the hardest to follow, without good guidance. Luckily the B2W boys do a great job there, but there can be pretty huge power swings with item pickups, or heroes hitting specific level benchmarks. There’s a lot of subtleties to the game at a pro level, despite me finding it the most enjoyable to play, and having played tons. SC2 ‘look at ze souply’ is a meme in the scene yes but it’s also a pretty good rule of thumb and used a lot for this reason. | ||
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Moonerz
United States323 Posts
On July 04 2022 22:54 WombaT wrote: Reynor and Serral at their current level would have been contenders in even the most cutthroat of eras. Clem would likely be a solid GSL mainstay at the very least and he’s room to improve further. As said earlier, the current implementation of WCS works. It develops players because there’s a clear pathway to improving by establishing a stable pathway. A player like Serral can go from pushing to be the best in Finland, to pushing to be a solid pro, to pushing to be the best in Europe and onwards. If the barrier is, as it was having to be a top elite player out of the gate, competing against the Korean structures it’s a gamble a lot of very talented players decided not to take. Looking backwards, with the lovely benefit of hindsight the establishment of the current WCS could have happened way earlier, and you could have had the parallel regional tournaments, and have the scenes mix in those huge open weekenders like IPL or MLGs that were awesome. You could have the best of different worlds with the established elite Mecca of Starcraft, regional leagues that worked in closing the gap and the big tournaments where the best of the best and the underdogs go toe to toe. Im not convinced of your first point. If you take their current skill now and drop them into the past sure. But if kespa was still around and the sc2 scene never dropped off i dont think this is really the case. The skill we would see in the game today would be so much higher than what it is now if teamhouses persisted. Look at inno he was playing league for years, his wtl team wanted inno to send replays of 20 games a week to prove he was playing sc2 lmao. Despite that he was still a contender. Foreigners did rise up but its also hugely the fact that all the infrastructure in korea disappeared and the level of competition and practicing dropped off severely. Wcs killed any hope of new kr players (though the playerbase was never really there post pl) because they had to compete and close the gap to inno maru rogue etc and it just wasnt worth it. Gsl prize distribution didnt help this obviously either lol So in the end dl did get it right, the weaker regions may eventually start winning once the top regions move on to other games or the infrastructure dies out. | ||
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Creager
Germany1662 Posts
On July 05 2022 00:02 Moonerz wrote: Im not convinced of your first point. If you take their current skill now and drop them into the past sure. But if kespa was still around and the sc2 scene never dropped off i dont think this is really the case. The skill we would see in the game today would be so much higher than what it is now if teamhouses persisted. Look at inno he was playing league for years, his wtl team wanted inno to send replays of 20 games a week to prove he was playing sc2 lmao. Despite that he was still a contender. Foreigners did rise up but its also hugely the fact that all the infrastructure in korea disappeared and the level of competition and practicing dropped off severely. Wcs killed any hope of new kr players (though the playerbase was never really there post pl) because they had to compete and close the gap to inno maru rogue etc and it just wasnt worth it. Gsl prize distribution didnt help this obviously either lol So in the end dl did get it right, the weaker regions may eventually start winning once the top regions move on to other games or the infrastructure dies out. Yup, IMO the Korean SC2 pro scene de-professionalizing after the matchfixing scandal directly resulted in a more even playing field between forgeigners and Koreans as the training regimen from established (keSPA-influenced) team houses was no longer a factor (wether you could achieve similar results with a different approach than simply being a young person having to endure esports bootcamp for many years we'll never know). How is this working out for BW, though? Would people also argue about the skill level having dropped in comparison to the old keSPA days despite new knowledge being aquired even today (think Carrier interceptor micro trick)? Was Flash better 10 years ago because he simply had to be due to the competition or did he just hone his skills further throughout the years? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland17979 Posts
On July 05 2022 00:02 Moonerz wrote: Im not convinced of your first point. If you take their current skill now and drop them into the past sure. But if kespa was still around and the sc2 scene never dropped off i dont think this is really the case. The skill we would see in the game today would be so much higher than what it is now if teamhouses persisted. Look at inno he was playing league for years, his wtl team wanted inno to send replays of 20 games a week to prove he was playing sc2 lmao. Despite that he was still a contender. Foreigners did rise up but its also hugely the fact that all the infrastructure in korea disappeared and the level of competition and practicing dropped off severely. Wcs killed any hope of new kr players (though the playerbase was never really there post pl) because they had to compete and close the gap to inno maru rogue etc and it just wasnt worth it. Gsl prize distribution didnt help this obviously either lol So in the end dl did get it right, the weaker regions may eventually start winning once the top regions move on to other games or the infrastructure dies out. To a degree, I think the general level would be higher if players had the infrastructure, and especially the additional tournaments we had in the Kespa era. On the other hand SC2 is not BW. In the latter the level of even a relatively mediocre player brought through the Kespa system was a basically unbridgeable gap. I think only Soma has really made significant inroads in the post-Kespa era and even he I think did have some exposure even as just a practice partner (more knowledgeable BW fans may correct me). I don’t think SC2 has quite the mechanical requirements and there hits a point where there’s diminishing returns from grinding in that training regime. Or even counter-productive returns. Even when Kespa was around, or only very recently exited the scene Korean players like Byun and Rain had success training in a different way. Byun’s run to his peak, while still different has more in common with a Serral or Reynor than a Kespa pro. In a parallel universe where all that remained, I think the overall level would be higher, absolutely. At the very peak top end I don’t think there’s really much gain the likes of Maru, Dark, Serral etc can make. Ultimately the WCS structure got nailed in parallel with the wheels falling off the Korean scene, and a general decline in the scene. The Korean scene then needed some love, which I’ve been in favour for and argued for. Europe especially was strong enough regionally to be opened up to the tier of players who might vacillate between scraping GSL qualification or making a Ro16 run on a good day. I think it was prudent to open that pathway, personally but even if that was done COVID became a factor and well, it weakens Korea yet further. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada7941 Posts
With that said, I think a big part of the "problem" or at least the peculiar situation that Starcraft 2 found itself in, came with the unbalanced between a huge group of player with a build in experience in Starcraft in Korea that were already treating Starcraft as a job and the incapacity of Starcraft 2 to sustain the infrastructure that created such players. We can try to find some exception, but the truth is that, as a whole, Starcraft 2 was never able to produce pro-players at the level of the ones it was given by Brood War (not necessarily even Kespa, just the Korean Brood War ethos). It made the SC2 pro-scene rather strange, where most people were not actually hopeful amateur that had climbed the rank of competitive play until they became pro, but rather already established professional that just wanted to keep their job. I think that impacted a lot the way the Korean pro-player scene collapse in 2015-16 and the numerous retirement we saw in its tail (and even before). Once the players lost their salary, they just didn't seems have much interest in keeping trying to make it happen by themselves like the NA/EU player had done. So we just lost a huge amount of players that were just overall better than the players in Korea or outside of it, that didn't come from the BW pro environment. The money wasn't even that bad, hell LOTV has been BY FAR, the most lucrative period for the average Korean prize money wise. | ||
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RogerChillingworth
2474 Posts
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Durnuu
12765 Posts
On July 04 2022 22:54 WombaT wrote: Reynor and Serral at their current level would have been contenders in even the most cutthroat of eras. Clem would likely be a solid GSL mainstay at the very least and he’s room to improve further. As said earlier, the current implementation of WCS works. It develops players because there’s a clear pathway to improving by establishing a stable pathway. A player like Serral can go from pushing to be the best in Finland, to pushing to be a solid pro, to pushing to be the best in Europe and onwards. If the barrier is, as it was having to be a top elite player out of the gate, competing against the Korean structures it’s a gamble a lot of very talented players decided not to take. Looking backwards, with the lovely benefit of hindsight the establishment of the current WCS could have happened way earlier, and you could have had the parallel regional tournaments, and have the scenes mix in those huge open weekenders like IPL or MLGs that were awesome. You could have the best of different worlds with the established elite Mecca of Starcraft, regional leagues that worked in closing the gap and the big tournaments where the best of the best and the underdogs go toe to toe. Saying Clem would be a GSL mainstay (I assume this meant code S) really overrates him. He probably would have gone down to random korean terrans in qualifiers or code A considering his TvT level. Only his TvZ is truly top level, and we all know korean zergs used to be a joke in Korea at the height of Korean depth (there were very few of them compared to T and P). He wouldn't have been able to count on his top tier TvZ to qualify for code S is what I mean. | ||
[Phantom]
Mexico1867 Posts
I once did the math, but it's been years so I don't remember the exact numbers but basically a considerably higher percentage of the playerbase watched sc2 tournaments compared to league of legends. Sc2 was created to be an esport specifically, with a lot of features making it easy to follow (they fucked up some things obviously but Dustin Browder is on record saying that), and I think they succeded. The problem is the olayerbase was small comparatively. And then things like the BL-Infestors, Swarmhost, Widow mine reduced the playerbase further. Then the WCS, even though we praise it, it fucked up a lot of things. The WCS killed the MLG and IPL. The ESL only survived because they were the ones producing some of the tournaments and they also invested heavily in other games. Big events couldn't compete, and the WCS initial terrible format shrunk the scene instead of making it bigger. And then ofcourse the fall of KeSPA was the final nail in the coffing. Still, I would say SC2 is a complete success (even though I think it could have been much bigger). It's been more than 10 years since WoL came out. I think it's bbeen like 12. Very few games have such an active scene. | ||
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