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I saw it mentioned by someone in one of the other threads and thought it's worth its own discussion. Pretty sure this has never happened before. Since herO winning DH Masters Atlanta in November 2022, Koreans have been stopped by foreigners in all the non-GSL International premiere tournaments, it's been more than one year and counting. Here are the Results:
2022 Dec - Homestory Cup XXII: Reynor
2023 Feb - IEM Katowice 2023: Oliveira
2023 May - ESL Masters 2023 Summer: Serral
2023 Aug - Gamers8: Reynor
2023 Sep - Master's Coliseum 6: Serral
2023 Dec - ESL Masters 2023 Winter: Clem
2024 Jan - Master's Coliseum 7: Serral
2024 Feb - IEM Katowice 2024: Serral
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Ironically, this drought is as long as the infamous Protoss struggle in premiere tournaments, since both were defined by herO's win in Atlanta.
For those people claiming "Terran and Zerg just have better players" to Protoss' drought, I wonder what they would say here?
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On February 17 2024 06:31 Nasigil wrote:
Ironically, this drought is as long as the infamous Protoss struggle in premiere tournaments, since both were defined by herO's win in Atlanta.
For those people claiming "Terran and Zerg just have better players" to Protoss' drought, I wonder what they would say here?
I don't really see how these two things are connected?
This really is an insane stat though. And while it certainly is a question how much the Serral-Factor plays a role here, in the end this is a drought you would have been banned for in 2015 even suggesting it.
Koreans are still the most dominant when it comes to playoffs participation, but I wonder how long that might last, considering how unattractive it is to play SC2 in Korea financially
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Canada8989 Posts
Clearly Koreans are saving all their builds for WTL, the rest of the competition just can't be taken seriously.
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Half the tournaments listed were won by Serral.
Have you ever considered there might a strong player outside of Korea who is winning tournaments by simply being good at the game?
Korea is still the strongest in SC2. In all of those finals its was most likely a Korean vs Foreigner and in the top 8 more than 5 koreans represented.
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France12780 Posts
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia).
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On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia).
I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
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On February 17 2024 06:39 Balnazza wrote:
I don't really see how these two things are connected?
This really is an insane stat though. And while it certainly is a question how much the Serral-Factor plays a role here, in the end this is a drought you would have been banned for in 2015 even suggesting it.
Koreans are still the most dominant when it comes to playoffs participation, but I wonder how long that might last, considering how unattractive it is to play SC2 in Korea financially
Those two things are not connected, of course. But strangely, I see a noticeable overlap in people that claims "Serral can't be GOAT because he doesn't play GSL" and those who think "Zerg is OP, Protoss players are just bad, only Terran players deserves everything they earned".
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On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
Koreans were also dominant in WC3 (even though they stopped getting new blood so early on), Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch.
...
Apparently koreans just really like Blizzard games and LoL was an accident?
(I just randomly slipped into german for that sentence for no reason...sorry ._.)
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France12780 Posts
On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
I don’t mean that KR will dominate every game they take seriously, but that they will overall do very well in every esports game they are invested. Especially for their size / number of citizens, they will remain a strong nation in esports for quite some time.
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On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still...
I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history.
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Northern Ireland24985 Posts
On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
If there’s one game that the benefits of hardcore grinding take a long time to hit diminishing returns, it’s probably Starcraft(s). Then when you have a regime established you end up with 40+ of the top 50 players in the world all in quite a localised scene and it becomes almost unassailable for anyone outside the scene to break in.
It’s a confluence of a whole bunch of factors really, but quite distinct to StarCraft IMO. Other games of course still benefit from putting the hours in, but you can still ‘work smarter not harder’ and be just as competitive versus the games with an absurd mechanical ceiling.
I think Serral only doesn’t rise into contention in an alternate reality where both Proleague kept going to a similar level, and the WCS structure wasn’t changed.
If you had 20/30 real top level, motivated Koreans again it’s difficult to get up to that level. It becomes almost impossible without some kind of regional locked competitions so that a player can earn a living, and gradually improve until they can make that final jump to the real top table.
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Northern Ireland24985 Posts
On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history.
Less interest and prize pool dwindles. Existing folks aren’t as good as they were, but they’re still too good for new talent to break through. Then attrition sees even more of the established crew going, but GSL takes a prize pool hit again along with cutting slots. Then it’s not just changing the format, but cutting a whole tournament. And there isn’t a system in place anymore to develop as a progamer until you’re ready to put in results. You have to jump from being a gifted amateur straight to being a fully formed competitive pro.
Ok there’s still the crowdfunding to come, but if my kiddo wanted to be an SC2 pro in Korea I’d do my best ‘are you fucking serious?’ face.
To even qualify you have to get good enough to beat someone like sOs, a great who isn’t quite what they once were, but still fucking good. Or someone like Nightmare who is a step ahead of you on your journey, but still qualifies the odd time and has the odd result and is bloody good too.
And if you pull that off you’re taking home 500 dollars, and you’ve got two shots a year to do it.
In addition SC2 isn’t big enough in Korea that you can carve a niche as a streamer on Afreeca, nor cultivate much of a following in foreign land as there’s a language barrier/Twitch pulling out etc.
It’s a pretty shite situation all-round. The Korean scene needed money, some other love and a long time ago. In the absence of Kespa you wouldn’t see a production line of talent like you used to, but you could create conditions where a few people consider it worth their while to try.
It’s not like nobody in Korea loves the game, or aspires to emulate their gaming heroes.
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Follow the money they said....
Pretty much Europe is the strong region where the money's at right now. So thats where the majority of good players will concentrate...
Its been a while like this, so its only obvious increasingly better players are arriving on Europe whereas not so much on Korea.
For example Clem and Raynor are pretty much the guys that will take Terran and Zerg forward, with maybe MaxPax as well if his highness can get out of his palace someday...
Whereas what korea's got ? sadly remnant players of better times, they are still good but thats about it. This year GSL are pretty much the same Players...
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There is a Protoss + Korea connection. Only Korea breeds championsship level Protosses. I'm pretty sure Neeb is the only non-Korean Protoss to have won a tournament in LotV with Koreans attending.
Also the non-existence of Protoss means that TvZ, ZvZ and TvT specialists will progress farther. If Oliveira and Clem had to fight through multiple strong Korean Protosses on fair balance, they most likely wouldn't be able to make it through.
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On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it.
I'm sorry but valorant isn't even more popular than their RTS game sudden attack nor more popular than BW. Valorant is pretty non existent in korea, hence why there is no dominant force in Korea. Talking out of your ass i see?
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On February 17 2024 08:58 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history. Less interest and prize pool dwindles. Existing folks aren’t as good as they were, but they’re still too good for new talent to break through. Then attrition sees even more of the established crew going, but GSL takes a prize pool hit again along with cutting slots. Then it’s not just changing the format, but cutting a whole tournament. And there isn’t a system in place anymore to develop as a progamer until you’re ready to put in results. You have to jump from being a gifted amateur straight to being a fully formed competitive pro. Ok there’s still the crowdfunding to come, but if my kiddo wanted to be an SC2 pro in Korea I’d do my best ‘are you fucking serious?’ face. To even qualify you have to get good enough to beat someone like sOs, a great who isn’t quite what they once were, but still fucking good. Or someone like Nightmare who is a step ahead of you on your journey, but still qualifies the odd time and has the odd result and is bloody good too. And if you pull that off you’re taking home 500 dollars, and you’ve got two shots a year to do it. In addition SC2 isn’t big enough in Korea that you can carve a niche as a streamer on Afreeca, nor cultivate much of a following in foreign land as there’s a language barrier/Twitch pulling out etc. It’s a pretty shite situation all-round. The Korean scene needed money, some other love and a long time ago. In the absence of Kespa you wouldn’t see a production line of talent like you used to, but you could create conditions where a few people consider it worth their while to try. It’s not like nobody in Korea loves the game, or aspires to emulate their gaming heroes.
Plus you have to play a really long time to get anywhere near the pro level in SC2 these days. Back in 2013 nobody had played the game for a few years, so it was easier to catch up. Starcraft's skill ceiling is so high that experience really matters.
Trigger is notable among pros for only having played since 2019/2020, but even that's 4 years and Trigger is still far from the top. There are some super-talents who can crack the top in a short span of time like Maxpax, but an aspiring pro has no real way of knowing how talented they really are. If there were still teamhouses and Kespa teams I imagine most rookies would never catch up to the veterans, but a few talents would inject a little bit of new blood into the scene.
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Northern Ireland24985 Posts
On February 17 2024 10:28 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 08:58 WombaT wrote:On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history. Less interest and prize pool dwindles. Existing folks aren’t as good as they were, but they’re still too good for new talent to break through. Then attrition sees even more of the established crew going, but GSL takes a prize pool hit again along with cutting slots. Then it’s not just changing the format, but cutting a whole tournament. And there isn’t a system in place anymore to develop as a progamer until you’re ready to put in results. You have to jump from being a gifted amateur straight to being a fully formed competitive pro. Ok there’s still the crowdfunding to come, but if my kiddo wanted to be an SC2 pro in Korea I’d do my best ‘are you fucking serious?’ face. To even qualify you have to get good enough to beat someone like sOs, a great who isn’t quite what they once were, but still fucking good. Or someone like Nightmare who is a step ahead of you on your journey, but still qualifies the odd time and has the odd result and is bloody good too. And if you pull that off you’re taking home 500 dollars, and you’ve got two shots a year to do it. In addition SC2 isn’t big enough in Korea that you can carve a niche as a streamer on Afreeca, nor cultivate much of a following in foreign land as there’s a language barrier/Twitch pulling out etc. It’s a pretty shite situation all-round. The Korean scene needed money, some other love and a long time ago. In the absence of Kespa you wouldn’t see a production line of talent like you used to, but you could create conditions where a few people consider it worth their while to try. It’s not like nobody in Korea loves the game, or aspires to emulate their gaming heroes. Plus you have to play a really long time to get anywhere near the pro level in SC2 these days. Back in 2013 nobody had played the game for a few years, so it was easier to catch up. Starcraft's skill ceiling is so high that experience really matters. Trigger is notable among pros for only having played since 2019/2020, but even that's 4 years and Trigger is still far from the top. There are some super-talents who can crack the top in a short span of time like Maxpax, but an aspiring pro has no real way of knowing how talented they really are. If there were still teamhouses and Kespa teams I imagine most rookies would never catch up to the veterans, but a few talents would inject a little bit of new blood into the scene.
Especially as a solo player, sure you can learn from many a resource but you won’t necessarily know why players are doing certain things, because you’re not benefiting from years of playing and training alongside folks and trading ideas.
I found this even trying to casually learn BW, there’s both so much knowledge needed as well as a lot of active players having obtained it 15+ years ago, so trying to track down things that nobody has really needed to discuss much further gets tricky.
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Mexico2170 Posts
This just proves what many have been saying for a long time. The Korean scene is not what it used to be and the level of play worldwide has reduced dramatically.
After Proleague and Kespa dissapeared, it's been downhill. Koreans have become literally worse, even if slowly, foreigers catched up over time.
The big advantage koreans always had was a very structured, disciplined, training regime. That went away, the game equalizes. And in a game such as sc2 where the global scene is bigger than koreas, it's inevitable something like this would happen. Koreans can and will win again, but this happening makes perfect sense.
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Canada8989 Posts
On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history.
Thing is, the Korean SC2 scene has not just been struggling in the last 5 years, it's been shrinking for the last 12 years. I'm not talking prize money or numbers of event, but players.bNightmare is the only professional SC2 player Korea has produce since the Kespa switch. Even in 2011-2012, it's crazy seeing the number of retirement.
They never really dominated SC2 as much as put the game in front of a bunch of teenagers BW player/pro and make them practice 24/7. Eventually, they time caught up to them and places where SC2 was actually popular overtook them.
Edit: Nightmare and Zoun, Zoun is post Kespa switch I think
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On February 17 2024 10:02 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. I'm sorry but valorant isn't even more popular than their RTS game sudden attack nor more popular than BW. Valorant is pretty non existent in korea, hence why there is no dominant force in Korea. Talking out of your ass i see?
"Pretty non existent in korea"
Of course I don't have any deep-dive look into South Korea, but if Valorant is so much "non existent", why is there such a high korean participation in the Pacific-Division? Why do three korean teams bought a slot (T1, DRX and Gen.G, all of which are very korea-focused)?
Riot even decided to put the entire Pacific Division at Seoul...okay, sure, the studio is probably the same as the LCK one, but if korea was such a bad place for Valorant, they surely would have looked somewhere else?
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Northern Ireland24985 Posts
On February 17 2024 11:44 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history. Thing is, the Korean SC2 scene has not just been struggling in the last 5 years, it's been shrinking for the last 12 years. I'm not talking prize money or numbers of event, but players.bNightmare is the only professional SC2 player Korea has produce since the Kespa switch. Even in 2011-2012, it's crazy seeing the number of retirement. They never really dominated SC2 as much as put the game in front of a bunch of teenagers BW player/pro and make them practice 24/7. Eventually, they time caught up to them and places where SC2 was actually popular overtook them. Edit: Nightmare and Zoun, Zoun is post Kespa switch I think
Even Zoun was a Kespa player at one point, hell looking it up even Nightmare spent some time in that system as a trainee player.
You see this a bit in BW too, even the gifted amateurs can’t really break through the Kespa-trained wall, even avowed B-teamers from back in the day are still just that bit too good. I attribute this not just to the training regime, but also networking probably plays a sizeable part too, probably one that is maybe overlooked. Unless you’re a total asshole, you’ll have a ton of pro practice partners. You have guys you’ve lived, breathed and importantly, discussed the game at length with and can continue to do so post-dissolution.
Korea is lacking both the structure to compete like they used to, as well as any incentive to. You can maybe manage with just 1 or those two missing, but not both.
I mean sure it’s not BW/League big, but it’s still big enough to conceivably nurture some new talent, just that having to displace a cohort of legends of the game merely to qualify for the one tournament open to you, to still make fuck all money just isn’t a journey people want to embark on.
Whereas someone like Serral starting out, there’s clear benchmarks to hop through and give this progaming thing a shot, and not have to live off tinned produce for a period doing it. Become ladder monster, become one of the best in Europe, become one of the best in Foreign Land, and then shoot it out versus Koreans who almost exclusively make up the best players in the world.
Any Korean who wants to pursue this career has to basically jump from gifted amateur to being one of the best in the world, immediately, and without the kind of team house training environment to at least learn their craft like those he’s competing against had.
I mean yeah Korea isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still the majority of the best 20 in the world playing there, it’s just such a tall order for new talent to ever pull off.
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On February 17 2024 23:40 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 11:44 Nakajin wrote:On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history. Thing is, the Korean SC2 scene has not just been struggling in the last 5 years, it's been shrinking for the last 12 years. I'm not talking prize money or numbers of event, but players.bNightmare is the only professional SC2 player Korea has produce since the Kespa switch. Even in 2011-2012, it's crazy seeing the number of retirement. They never really dominated SC2 as much as put the game in front of a bunch of teenagers BW player/pro and make them practice 24/7. Eventually, they time caught up to them and places where SC2 was actually popular overtook them. Edit: Nightmare and Zoun, Zoun is post Kespa switch I think Even Zoun was a Kespa player at one point, hell looking it up even Nightmare spent some time in that system as a trainee player. You see this a bit in BW too, even the gifted amateurs can’t really break through the Kespa-trained wall, even avowed B-teamers from back in the day are still just that bit too good. I attribute this not just to the training regime, but also networking probably plays a sizeable part too, probably one that is maybe overlooked. Unless you’re a total asshole, you’ll have a ton of pro practice partners. You have guys you’ve lived, breathed and importantly, discussed the game at length with and can continue to do so post-dissolution. Korea is lacking both the structure to compete like they used to, as well as any incentive to. You can maybe manage with just 1 or those two missing, but not both. I mean sure it’s not BW/League big, but it’s still big enough to conceivably nurture some new talent, just that having to displace a cohort of legends of the game merely to qualify for the one tournament open to you, to still make fuck all money just isn’t a journey people want to embark on. Whereas someone like Serral starting out, there’s clear benchmarks to hop through and give this progaming thing a shot, and not have to live off tinned produce for a period doing it. Become ladder monster, become one of the best in Europe, become one of the best in Foreign Land, and then shoot it out versus Koreans who almost exclusively make up the best players in the world. Any Korean who wants to pursue this career has to basically jump from gifted amateur to being one of the best in the world, immediately, and without the kind of team house training environment to at least learn their craft like those he’s competing against had. I mean yeah Korea isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still the majority of the best 20 in the world playing there, it’s just such a tall order for new talent to ever pull off.
Grubby once got asked by someone in chat "what should I do if I wanted to become a pro in WC3 now?". Grubby answered "the first thing you need to do is 'started to play 20 years ago'"
Of course it was an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it: If you started to play WC3 today, you would mostly go up against people who play this game since 2003. And with SC2 it is even worse, because while you "only" have to close an experience-gap of 12ish years, you go against players who have been pro in a skill-tight enviroment in that time.
The other side of that problem would be something like Age of Empires 2, where TheViper a few years back said it was somewhat "easy" to to break into the highest level, since while a lot of the top players were playing for a long time, there are barely any fulltime pros.
Trigger is the often mentioned example for someone who did it in the last few years, but he has the benefit of being in NA - the "easiest" path to decent money in SC2 (no offense). Getting through GSL is so much harder and there is barely any benefit for it. And in the end, money is an important aspect if you want to nurture talent. You can't really expect someone to live in poverty for five years until he might be good enough to earn some bigger bucks in bigger events - especially considering that there is no guarantee that there even will be big bucks in five years.
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On February 17 2024 10:02 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. I'm sorry but valorant isn't even more popular than their RTS game sudden attack nor more popular than BW. Valorant is pretty non existent in korea, hence why there is no dominant force in Korea. Talking out of your ass i see?
What is this stat missing?
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/DELSjLh.png)
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Northern Ireland24985 Posts
On February 18 2024 00:09 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 23:40 WombaT wrote:On February 17 2024 11:44 Nakajin wrote:On February 17 2024 08:03 Cricketer12 wrote:On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. We're not talking about any game though, we're talking about the one famous for their domination. The BW scene still exists in Korea more than 25 years after the game's release. Naturally things declined with the death of KeSPa but still... I'm curious what evolution has occurred within 5 years to negate reality and history. Thing is, the Korean SC2 scene has not just been struggling in the last 5 years, it's been shrinking for the last 12 years. I'm not talking prize money or numbers of event, but players.bNightmare is the only professional SC2 player Korea has produce since the Kespa switch. Even in 2011-2012, it's crazy seeing the number of retirement. They never really dominated SC2 as much as put the game in front of a bunch of teenagers BW player/pro and make them practice 24/7. Eventually, they time caught up to them and places where SC2 was actually popular overtook them. Edit: Nightmare and Zoun, Zoun is post Kespa switch I think Even Zoun was a Kespa player at one point, hell looking it up even Nightmare spent some time in that system as a trainee player. You see this a bit in BW too, even the gifted amateurs can’t really break through the Kespa-trained wall, even avowed B-teamers from back in the day are still just that bit too good. I attribute this not just to the training regime, but also networking probably plays a sizeable part too, probably one that is maybe overlooked. Unless you’re a total asshole, you’ll have a ton of pro practice partners. You have guys you’ve lived, breathed and importantly, discussed the game at length with and can continue to do so post-dissolution. Korea is lacking both the structure to compete like they used to, as well as any incentive to. You can maybe manage with just 1 or those two missing, but not both. I mean sure it’s not BW/League big, but it’s still big enough to conceivably nurture some new talent, just that having to displace a cohort of legends of the game merely to qualify for the one tournament open to you, to still make fuck all money just isn’t a journey people want to embark on. Whereas someone like Serral starting out, there’s clear benchmarks to hop through and give this progaming thing a shot, and not have to live off tinned produce for a period doing it. Become ladder monster, become one of the best in Europe, become one of the best in Foreign Land, and then shoot it out versus Koreans who almost exclusively make up the best players in the world. Any Korean who wants to pursue this career has to basically jump from gifted amateur to being one of the best in the world, immediately, and without the kind of team house training environment to at least learn their craft like those he’s competing against had. I mean yeah Korea isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still the majority of the best 20 in the world playing there, it’s just such a tall order for new talent to ever pull off. Grubby once got asked by someone in chat "what should I do if I wanted to become a pro in WC3 now?". Grubby answered "the first thing you need to do is 'started to play 20 years ago'" Of course it was an exaggeration, but there is some truth to it: If you started to play WC3 today, you would mostly go up against people who play this game since 2003. And with SC2 it is even worse, because while you "only" have to close an experience-gap of 12ish years, you go against players who have been pro in a skill-tight enviroment in that time. The other side of that problem would be something like Age of Empires 2, where TheViper a few years back said it was somewhat "easy" to to break into the highest level, since while a lot of the top players were playing for a long time, there are barely any fulltime pros. Trigger is the often mentioned example for someone who did it in the last few years, but he has the benefit of being in NA - the "easiest" path to decent money in SC2 (no offense). Getting through GSL is so much harder and there is barely any benefit for it. And in the end, money is an important aspect if you want to nurture talent. [b]You can't really expect someone to live in poverty for five years until he might be good enough to earn some bigger bucks in bigger events - especially considering that there is no guarantee that there even will be big bucks in five years.[\b]
Yeah, as someone who watched a ton of Grubby when he streamed WC3 specifically, I learned rather a lot of new things.
BW, WC3, SC2 aren’t like chess. There aren’t books you can learn from, whole pieces collecting examples of games and theory and the development of the game.
Progamers don’t write everything down as to their thought processes, how the meta actually developed over time. At best you have decent players kind of attempting to reverse engineer a closed system from the results we see at the end of the process. At worst, nobody does it. It’s why it’s quite fascinating to get decent pros casting, they point out little things that even pretty knowledgeable casters and fans just wouldn’t pick up on. Sure you can copy a neat build, but you don’t realise it’s a really specific response to a calculation of what the opponent’s infrastructure and gas timing or something
I mean there is some information out there, but it’s fragmented and all over the place, and it’s tricky to gather. I’ve had this issue with both BW and WC3, going back after all these years. I just didn’t see it as possible to get up to any kind of level without a huge time investment, and I was shooting for way, way below pro level.
On the bolded I mean, sadly this is just 100% it. A multi-year year grind for a definite is one thing (getting a good degree, living like a monk to get a house deposit), it’s hard but you get your reward, committing to a grind for a maybe is just that bit more gruelling and risky. Can’t blame folks for not doing it.
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so gsl turned to a safe space for koreans?
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On February 18 2024 03:58 kAra wrote:
so gsl turned to a safe space for koreans?
According to some people, it's still the most prestigious tournament in the world and you can't be GOAT if you don't play in it.
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I miss rogue so much, I wonder if it would've made a difference if he didn't have to go to military service. But it's pointless now, he won't be as good after he finishes the military service, so there's no way we can tell. And he's also much older than Serral.
Maybe it's time to do the inverse region lock, to protect Korean players? 
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On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia).
China would have most likely overcome sk in lol if they hadn't been the law preventing the minor of playing, there is 0 fresh talent in lpl and LDL
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On February 18 2024 08:25 Nasigil wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 03:58 kAra wrote:
so gsl turned to a safe space for koreans? According to some people, it's still the most prestigious tournament in the world and you can't be GOAT if you don't play in it.
To be fair, nowadays just its prestige remains. The time in which the gsl champion could be called the best in the world at the time of the tournament winning has long gone. No one can be the best in the world now if he doesn't show he can beat Serral.
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While our beloved game isn't dead it's certainly moved into a care ward and only time and perhaps the sucess/quality of the upcoming RTSs will tell for how long we'll get professionally organized tournaments to enjoy. As long as there are servers it won't *die*, but probably only community events will remain. Who can say.
But it's gonna be 8 years this year since Proleague ended and it's still around, if vastly diminished, so I think on the whole we had a good run there.
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On February 17 2024 10:02 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 07:21 CicadaSC wrote:On February 17 2024 07:09 Poopi wrote:
I mean, there is no KR scene left. If sc2 was popular in Korea like League of Legends is, KR players would dominate overall.
Even though China managed to kinda catch up with money and KR players initially, Korea is still the dominant force in LoL. In most esport games where KR actively participates, they usually dominate the scene.
My personal theory is that while the Korean society issues (like over competitive school / work system, high suicide rate, etc.) is a bit sad for their people, but since esports is an alternative and culturally accepted, their system can also produce competitive monsters (while crushing some less successful people).
To go back to the subject, there is indeed no young blood in the KR scene, it’s the same 10-15 players from 2010 (eSF) and 2012 (kespa/BW) players.
On the other hand, even though Clem / Serral started sc2 early in the game’s life, they are still young and gifted so their youth / work / talent will pay its dividends. Since KR has no such things, they won’t develop young talents that might make Serral / Clem life harder in international tournaments.
Maru being the only « young » enough + talented enough player isn’t sufficient to have a KR player win those tournaments.
As for Oliveira, he has shown insane potential but usually struggled to maintain that level / came close but no cigars vs top players. In 2023 he was on the run of his life and rode his insane momentum from the crowd. That’s more of a fluke than anything.
I would put Clem and Oliveira in a similar basket, but Clem might reach Reynor’s ability to win tournaments regularly.
As for Serral, being the best in the game helps you win tournaments. But Serral is an outlier, without Serral, KR would probably win more than half of the tournaments (see DH Valencia). I'm sorry but this is just cope. I'm pretty sure esports as a whole has evolved to the point it is a global competition and not just kr dominating if they take a game "seriously." In fact, the games they dominate are few and far in-between. Sure they have league of legends.... But that's really it? Valorant is popular in Korea yet they don't dominate. Far from it. I'm sorry but valorant isn't even more popular than their RTS game sudden attack nor more popular than BW. Valorant is pretty non existent in korea, hence why there is no dominant force in Korea. Talking out of your ass i see?
Where do u get your info from lmao. Saying I am talking out my ass how about you look up the stats? The irony is palpable check PC bang player counts..
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Check Afreeca tv viewership. BW and League consistently alternate as the top 2.
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Still surprising how well Sudden Attack retains its spot
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![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/n5o2fUJ.png)
EPT
