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Northern Ireland26604 Posts
On July 05 2022 04:26 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +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.
We are talking alternate histories, at least in terms of raw talent Clem would have the chops to hang at that level, IMO. Mainstay was a bad choice of words on my part though I’ll agree.
If we were to throw Clem in as he is now, I agree and actually it’s been so long with Zerg cleaning house that I forget sometimes how Code S used to not be a very fertile ground for them. He hasn’t shown enough, and it’s not about being a borderline TvZ specialist but not rounding out his play all-round for me to stick him higher than I did. Serral and Reynor have been amongst the best in their race at all the matchups for forever now.
It’s more that I think Serral, Reynor in particular. others to a degree and general depth certainly, Europe in particular finally got their talent pipeline working.
It just so happens that this started bearing fruit when the Korean pipeline got cut off. Something that brings me no pleasure whatsoever.
I just don’t think it should disparage the chops the big European 2 have, they’re incredibly gifted players.
If we’re going to pool GSL and WCS together, do a bit of fudging where various players from different spans are close to their peaks. Currently as things stand Serral and Reynor are outright 2/5 of the favourites to lift the title.
Back in the stacked day? Pick an arbitrary number but they’re 2 from 12-14 or w/e who could conceivably win it, but could conceivably have a bad day and go out in Ro32. IMO. Depending on meta etc.
If we take the rest of foreign land. Your Ro8 regular level players like Showtime, HM, Clem, Lambo et al. They’d be regularly making Code S, and probably regularly making the former Ro16/Ro8, or the Ro10 now.
In peak times some could conceivably make it, and maybe the odd deep-ish run, but equally it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if none of them even qualified.
But they would be Code S level players. Just as Code S level players used to miss qualifications regularly as 40+ rock solid pros don’t fit into 32 places.
TLDR: Serral and Reynor are very talented outliers, I think they’re highly competitive wherever you stick them.
The best of the rest foreigners have also improved, but it’s difficult to gauge how much because the Korean scene has declined almost in the inverse.
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On July 04 2022 16:58 Blargh wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2022 15:35 serendipitous wrote: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. 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"
The ongoing discussion about pure RTS "not being fun" compared to games like league. We all have our different opinions, mine is that RTS simply have a high barrier of entry as well as lacking the social aspect. A bit part of the "social aspect" is that losing a game doesn't necessarily make you feel bad because you can mentally blame one or several of your teammates. Therefore the stress of league is less, at least the frustration with your own failure which you always need to swallow in a 1v1 game like starcraft.
To compare starcraft with other competetive games its better to compare it with other 1v1 because the mentality and also what the gamers want are different.
RTS and starcraft have wide spread appeal even if its not "in" right now, for every person that likes competetive games RTS is the golden genre. It has the highest skill ceiling and that is only possible because every choice isn't easy. Like your friend said for me games like cod or battlefield were you just lose if you shot slower than your opponent is more boring. Because there is so little room for you to express your personal flair/style/creativity in your playstyle.
FPS and MOBAS are popular because they are social activity for the masses, easy to play and understand. League is often times boring, you spend ten minutes farming in your lane and just wait for stuff to happen, stuff like teleporting bot to secure dragon. Someone wrote important stuff is happening all over the map, most things that happen are unimportant unless someone missplays and dies. Which is good for many players, that its slow paced and not too stressful most of the game. But for truly competetive players that want a fast pace there are better games out there.
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Not really that controversial of a take.
The professional playerbase has a lot less depth than before, and that gap will only increase as the current players get even better since there's so little new blood in the scene. Does that make the current championships less meaningful than those of the past? To a degree, yes, but that's the nature of all sports. Nobody celebrates DWK or SKT's post-2019 LCK trophies any less even though there was a Korean exodus that weakened the region.
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