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On June 26 2024 08:11 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. Sorry, but really, what are you talking about? First of all: Yes, it is completly natural to take away money from the top and award it to the bottom. Because if you only run top-heavy competitions, everyone else will drop out. That principle is true on every level. Very basic example: Maybe tournaments should only give out money to the winner? Because clearly that person worked and played harder than anyone else, so why should they also get money? Answer for that is obvious: You need money to get into the career. Because most players who start out the game won't be Maru and win tournaments with 14. And they won't be Serral and dominate the world as soon as they go full-time. But how do you justify going (semi-)pro with 18-20 after school? You justify it by getting money. You either get money because there are competitions for your "entry level" or because teams like in Proleague pay you. If you don't do that, one of two things happen: 1)Players go to college and don't play fulltime, because they need a career. But that naturally translates in worth results. 2)Players just don't go pro at all. In many sports, there are lower leagues, lower tournaments. These tournaments usually don't pay for themselves, but are financed by the S-Tier competition pumping in money. That is money "taken away" from better players, but it is necessary to ensure that people can get into the sports. This is especially important in SC2, since there is no guarantee that there will be any money. Last year for example there was a realistic chance that neither GSL nor EPT would continue in 2024. The region-lock was necessary to develop the talent in the world and let it get caught up. Which was also paying tribute to the fact that the key-audience is not in Korea. Now about "Blizzard messed up *hurrdurr*" --> No, they didn't? Atleast not in the way you think. They awarded money towards their own playing system, but didn't go into competition with Afreeca and GSL. And yet they paid a large sum of GSL prizepool. Even though Afreeca/GSL themselves did an extremly shitty job utilizing their actual audience, aka. foreign watchers. That is something they apparently only noticed last year. And it's not like Koreans didn't still get hefty perks compared to the rest of the world (e.g. eight BlizzCon slots vs. eight for the entire world). That was a clear sign to respect the tremendously strong playerbase in Korea. If the region-lock wasn't a thing, I'm pretty sure the korean scene would look the same as it does today, maybe even worse. But the entire rest of the world would definetly look tremendously worse. We might not even have gotten a Serral and a Reynor and a Clem. But without these top-dogs, ESL would probably also not invest anymore. Why invest in a game that isn't remotely present in your key-audience?
It is okay to award some financial incentive towards the prospect/academy/lower level talent. It is not good to reward the lowest tiers of your sport equally to the highest tier. It takes money out of the pockets of those who are putting in the real work and donating it to the average or hobbyist. Especially in a system where you're essentially locked into not being able to compete for that big ticket due to the restrictions on WCS long term events. I'm not saying money should only go to the winner, what I'm saying it that #20 KOR had more invested, more time spent, and was a better player than #20 EU or NA, but received the same payout.
How do you justify at that point going semi-pro or pro? Well hopefully you have a team supporting you, as well as a collection of smaller event wins that could easily do it. My point wasn't that #1 through #4 EU makes NO money, but that the scale should not be equal, especially when the events restrict individuals from playing in all of them. Meanwhile a weekend EU cup with a 3000 dollar first place that nobody else would bother considering would be free if you were that good or you'd be fine with the 1500 dollar 2nd palce. Either way you're still funding your pro career.
You are right in many sports there are lower leagues and lower events. There were in SC as well. What there isn't is 3 separate NBA leagues all paying the same as the NA NBA league, where funds by the NBA top org are being divvied up equally amongst all scenes equally, so playing in EU against lesser talents is just as financially profitable as playing against the best, and is heavily supported by the numbers and revenue generated by the best players.
As for blizzard messing up everything. Look no further than the state of all the esports under that umbrella lol. And no that is a separate issue beyond just the money siphon from SC2 into weaker scenes. It was the restrictions places on TO's. It was the money demanded from running outside events. And whatever funds you think were donated to the GSL is laughable considering their talent was what generated the revenue of most events lol. You are right the event runners who in part ran events for BW did struggle in SC2 when blizzard took over. Crazy how before that they were doing just fine in a game that Blizzard hadn't thought about the competitive atmosphere what so ever.
You are right region lock wasn't what I was solely hinting at though it was a part. If you have months long events in 3 separate regions, nobody can compete for that prize pool in all 3. And honestly I think we still would have got those same players you mentioned, but they wouldn't have been receiving the money that should have been in the top system, nor free seeding into events through playing lesser talent. Does it change everything or anything? Don't know, but to claim those paths were anywhere near equal is foolish.
On June 26 2024 08:13 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. I didn’t like the WCS system when it wasn’t region locked, you still had the issue of Koreans just showing up for those tournaments and not really developing the regions. I was always much more in favour of a soft lock, and to this day. If a player (Polt being a great example) is making his life in another region, they’ll be playing consistently with players there and (hopefully) raising the level overall. Drop the prize pool versus Korea too by all means One of many Blizz mistakes IMO, I prefer that by far to a hard region lock, and I think the window to really salvage Kr has been passed That said I mean Kespa made a ton of mistakes, the scene when they arrived was as fragmented as it ever was and they never really tailored their product to where the viewership was.
Region lock or running 3 separate big leagues with the same heavily funded prize pool. Either way you were taking from people who had SC2 as their full time job and were the best, to fund the existence of hobbyists. This isn't about the top of the top, serral might be serral in either system or maybe he has a bit less because he chose to stay in the weaker area. Or maybe he would have had to go to korea and actually faced the gauntlet. But the #8 or #15 WCS NA or EU player were they really deserving of that inflated money? Also to that same point you'd still have to take some away from the top as well. You could still foster a scene of development without giving the minor league the same cash injection as those who are on the top.
And I'm cool with the locks or whatever I guess, but polt doesn't choose EU if it wasn't freer than KOR and the ratio of returns higher. Meanwhile if the distribution was properly given toward the best scene, would polt have moved? This isn't saying eliminate all funding for WCS abroad, but that it didn't deserve anywhere near the same consideration as KOR. And by the way this wasn't just in terms of money, but invites and WCS points that you got to benefit off of over other players who had to face the gauntlet every single event.
Blizzard's butchering of their esports titles and attempts to control the scene are far too numerous and not limited to just SC2. They attempted to be the big dogs while butchering pretty much everything at the time. But the company has been in the toilet for so long that would be far too much to talk about in this thread. I do agree that KESPA made plenty of mistakes and overstepped in many ways as well. But Blizzard has killed or vastly limited the success of so many entities in their attempt to exist in esports, meanwhile Blizzard games in esports thrived without Blizzard interference for quite some time.
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I will apologize to Mizenhauer for some snark. I obviously disagree with your conclusion, but I think you creating the list was a beneficial project for the community as it sparked lots of debate and interest. I was never denying that you have a strong historical knowledge of the game and scene that I do not have.
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Northern Ireland24512 Posts
On June 26 2024 11:18 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 08:11 Balnazza wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course
I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral
While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again.
IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. Sorry, but really, what are you talking about? First of all: Yes, it is completly natural to take away money from the top and award it to the bottom. Because if you only run top-heavy competitions, everyone else will drop out. That principle is true on every level. Very basic example: Maybe tournaments should only give out money to the winner? Because clearly that person worked and played harder than anyone else, so why should they also get money? Answer for that is obvious: You need money to get into the career. Because most players who start out the game won't be Maru and win tournaments with 14. And they won't be Serral and dominate the world as soon as they go full-time. But how do you justify going (semi-)pro with 18-20 after school? You justify it by getting money. You either get money because there are competitions for your "entry level" or because teams like in Proleague pay you. If you don't do that, one of two things happen: 1)Players go to college and don't play fulltime, because they need a career. But that naturally translates in worth results. 2)Players just don't go pro at all. In many sports, there are lower leagues, lower tournaments. These tournaments usually don't pay for themselves, but are financed by the S-Tier competition pumping in money. That is money "taken away" from better players, but it is necessary to ensure that people can get into the sports. This is especially important in SC2, since there is no guarantee that there will be any money. Last year for example there was a realistic chance that neither GSL nor EPT would continue in 2024. The region-lock was necessary to develop the talent in the world and let it get caught up. Which was also paying tribute to the fact that the key-audience is not in Korea. Now about "Blizzard messed up *hurrdurr*" --> No, they didn't? Atleast not in the way you think. They awarded money towards their own playing system, but didn't go into competition with Afreeca and GSL. And yet they paid a large sum of GSL prizepool. Even though Afreeca/GSL themselves did an extremly shitty job utilizing their actual audience, aka. foreign watchers. That is something they apparently only noticed last year. And it's not like Koreans didn't still get hefty perks compared to the rest of the world (e.g. eight BlizzCon slots vs. eight for the entire world). That was a clear sign to respect the tremendously strong playerbase in Korea. If the region-lock wasn't a thing, I'm pretty sure the korean scene would look the same as it does today, maybe even worse. But the entire rest of the world would definetly look tremendously worse. We might not even have gotten a Serral and a Reynor and a Clem. But without these top-dogs, ESL would probably also not invest anymore. Why invest in a game that isn't remotely present in your key-audience? It is okay to award some financial incentive towards the prospect/academy/lower level talent. It is not good to reward the lowest tiers of your sport equally to the highest tier. It takes money out of the pockets of those who are putting in the real work and donating it to the average or hobbyist. Especially in a system where you're essentially locked into not being able to compete for that big ticket due to the restrictions on WCS long term events. I'm not saying money should only go to the winner, what I'm saying it that #20 KOR had more invested, more time spent, and was a better player than #20 EU or NA, but received the same payout. How do you justify at that point going semi-pro or pro? Well hopefully you have a team supporting you, as well as a collection of smaller event wins that could easily do it. My point wasn't that #1 through #4 EU makes NO money, but that the scale should not be equal, especially when the events restrict individuals from playing in all of them. Meanwhile a weekend EU cup with a 3000 dollar first place that nobody else would bother considering would be free if you were that good or you'd be fine with the 1500 dollar 2nd palce. Either way you're still funding your pro career. You are right in many sports there are lower leagues and lower events. There were in SC as well. What there isn't is 3 separate NBA leagues all paying the same as the NA NBA league, where funds by the NBA top org are being divvied up equally amongst all scenes equally, so playing in EU against lesser talents is just as financially profitable as playing against the best, and is heavily supported by the numbers and revenue generated by the best players. As for blizzard messing up everything. Look no further than the state of all the esports under that umbrella lol. And no that is a separate issue beyond just the money siphon from SC2 into weaker scenes. It was the restrictions places on TO's. It was the money demanded from running outside events. And whatever funds you think were donated to the GSL is laughable considering their talent was what generated the revenue of most events lol. You are right the event runners who in part ran events for BW did struggle in SC2 when blizzard took over. Crazy how before that they were doing just fine in a game that Blizzard hadn't thought about the competitive atmosphere what so ever. You are right region lock wasn't what I was solely hinting at though it was a part. If you have months long events in 3 separate regions, nobody can compete for that prize pool in all 3. And honestly I think we still would have got those same players you mentioned, but they wouldn't have been receiving the money that should have been in the top system, nor free seeding into events through playing lesser talent. Does it change everything or anything? Don't know, but to claim those paths were anywhere near equal is foolish. Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 08:13 WombaT wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course
I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral
While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again.
IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. I didn’t like the WCS system when it wasn’t region locked, you still had the issue of Koreans just showing up for those tournaments and not really developing the regions. I was always much more in favour of a soft lock, and to this day. If a player (Polt being a great example) is making his life in another region, they’ll be playing consistently with players there and (hopefully) raising the level overall. Drop the prize pool versus Korea too by all means One of many Blizz mistakes IMO, I prefer that by far to a hard region lock, and I think the window to really salvage Kr has been passed That said I mean Kespa made a ton of mistakes, the scene when they arrived was as fragmented as it ever was and they never really tailored their product to where the viewership was. Region lock or running 3 separate big leagues with the same heavily funded prize pool. Either way you were taking from people who had SC2 as their full time job and were the best, to fund the existence of hobbyists. This isn't about the top of the top, serral might be serral in either system or maybe he has a bit less because he chose to stay in the weaker area. Or maybe he would have had to go to korea and actually faced the gauntlet. But the #8 or #15 WCS NA or EU player were they really deserving of that inflated money? Also to that same point you'd still have to take some away from the top as well. You could still foster a scene of development without giving the minor league the same cash injection as those who are on the top. And I'm cool with the locks or whatever I guess, but polt doesn't choose EU if it wasn't freer than KOR and the ratio of returns higher. Meanwhile if the distribution was properly given toward the best scene, would polt have moved? This isn't saying eliminate all funding for WCS abroad, but that it didn't deserve anywhere near the same consideration as KOR. And by the way this wasn't just in terms of money, but invites and WCS points that you got to benefit off of over other players who had to face the gauntlet every single event. Blizzard's butchering of their esports titles and attempts to control the scene are far too numerous and not limited to just SC2. They attempted to be the big dogs while butchering pretty much everything at the time. But the company has been in the toilet for so long that would be far too much to talk about in this thread. I do agree that KESPA made plenty of mistakes and overstepped in many ways as well. But Blizzard has killed or vastly limited the success of so many entities in their attempt to exist in esports, meanwhile Blizzard games in esports thrived without Blizzard interference for quite some time.
It really doesn’t help when Saudi Arabia ESL are ploughing a million dollars into a mega-tournament in a scene with these clear structural issues.
Personally let’s see I’ve got a magic wand, but this magic wand has its limits so I can’t say, prevent Kespa pulling out.
I think you make good points, especially with WCS points and how they work regionally. Never been a big fan of that especially but it’s even more pronounced when WC tier events have kept big prize pools, but others have shrunk.
- I’d cut the non-Korean prize pools a bit, plough that money into Korean tournaments. Be it extra GSLs per year, or some other banner.
- Have a truly coordinated calendar, properly synced up so you don’t end up with the occasional clashes
- I’d split WCS points into two separate categories. Internal regional classification, and an international standings one. I’d cut some spots awarded for events from the former and give to the latter. The rationale here is to cut a bit of region farming and reward folks who actually show up and can make deep runs at events with an open, high-quality field
- As per the above, one would only earn those international points at things like international weekenders, WCS season finals and the likes.
- Return to 2 WC tier events that are different in composition and what they’re meant to do. Where Blizzcon was basically always a smattering of top Koreans and a shot for people rewarded for regional performance, and Katowice was your best of the best, who’s hot and more open qualification.
Just spitballing nonsense really, hopefully there’s the genesis of a thought in there somewhere!
|
On June 26 2024 13:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 11:18 NoobSkills wrote:On June 26 2024 08:11 Balnazza wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:
[quote]
I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru.
...
... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral
Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. Sorry, but really, what are you talking about? First of all: Yes, it is completly natural to take away money from the top and award it to the bottom. Because if you only run top-heavy competitions, everyone else will drop out. That principle is true on every level. Very basic example: Maybe tournaments should only give out money to the winner? Because clearly that person worked and played harder than anyone else, so why should they also get money? Answer for that is obvious: You need money to get into the career. Because most players who start out the game won't be Maru and win tournaments with 14. And they won't be Serral and dominate the world as soon as they go full-time. But how do you justify going (semi-)pro with 18-20 after school? You justify it by getting money. You either get money because there are competitions for your "entry level" or because teams like in Proleague pay you. If you don't do that, one of two things happen: 1)Players go to college and don't play fulltime, because they need a career. But that naturally translates in worth results. 2)Players just don't go pro at all. In many sports, there are lower leagues, lower tournaments. These tournaments usually don't pay for themselves, but are financed by the S-Tier competition pumping in money. That is money "taken away" from better players, but it is necessary to ensure that people can get into the sports. This is especially important in SC2, since there is no guarantee that there will be any money. Last year for example there was a realistic chance that neither GSL nor EPT would continue in 2024. The region-lock was necessary to develop the talent in the world and let it get caught up. Which was also paying tribute to the fact that the key-audience is not in Korea. Now about "Blizzard messed up *hurrdurr*" --> No, they didn't? Atleast not in the way you think. They awarded money towards their own playing system, but didn't go into competition with Afreeca and GSL. And yet they paid a large sum of GSL prizepool. Even though Afreeca/GSL themselves did an extremly shitty job utilizing their actual audience, aka. foreign watchers. That is something they apparently only noticed last year. And it's not like Koreans didn't still get hefty perks compared to the rest of the world (e.g. eight BlizzCon slots vs. eight for the entire world). That was a clear sign to respect the tremendously strong playerbase in Korea. If the region-lock wasn't a thing, I'm pretty sure the korean scene would look the same as it does today, maybe even worse. But the entire rest of the world would definetly look tremendously worse. We might not even have gotten a Serral and a Reynor and a Clem. But without these top-dogs, ESL would probably also not invest anymore. Why invest in a game that isn't remotely present in your key-audience? It is okay to award some financial incentive towards the prospect/academy/lower level talent. It is not good to reward the lowest tiers of your sport equally to the highest tier. It takes money out of the pockets of those who are putting in the real work and donating it to the average or hobbyist. Especially in a system where you're essentially locked into not being able to compete for that big ticket due to the restrictions on WCS long term events. I'm not saying money should only go to the winner, what I'm saying it that #20 KOR had more invested, more time spent, and was a better player than #20 EU or NA, but received the same payout. How do you justify at that point going semi-pro or pro? Well hopefully you have a team supporting you, as well as a collection of smaller event wins that could easily do it. My point wasn't that #1 through #4 EU makes NO money, but that the scale should not be equal, especially when the events restrict individuals from playing in all of them. Meanwhile a weekend EU cup with a 3000 dollar first place that nobody else would bother considering would be free if you were that good or you'd be fine with the 1500 dollar 2nd palce. Either way you're still funding your pro career. You are right in many sports there are lower leagues and lower events. There were in SC as well. What there isn't is 3 separate NBA leagues all paying the same as the NA NBA league, where funds by the NBA top org are being divvied up equally amongst all scenes equally, so playing in EU against lesser talents is just as financially profitable as playing against the best, and is heavily supported by the numbers and revenue generated by the best players. As for blizzard messing up everything. Look no further than the state of all the esports under that umbrella lol. And no that is a separate issue beyond just the money siphon from SC2 into weaker scenes. It was the restrictions places on TO's. It was the money demanded from running outside events. And whatever funds you think were donated to the GSL is laughable considering their talent was what generated the revenue of most events lol. You are right the event runners who in part ran events for BW did struggle in SC2 when blizzard took over. Crazy how before that they were doing just fine in a game that Blizzard hadn't thought about the competitive atmosphere what so ever. You are right region lock wasn't what I was solely hinting at though it was a part. If you have months long events in 3 separate regions, nobody can compete for that prize pool in all 3. And honestly I think we still would have got those same players you mentioned, but they wouldn't have been receiving the money that should have been in the top system, nor free seeding into events through playing lesser talent. Does it change everything or anything? Don't know, but to claim those paths were anywhere near equal is foolish. On June 26 2024 08:13 WombaT wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:
[quote]
I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru.
...
... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral
Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. I didn’t like the WCS system when it wasn’t region locked, you still had the issue of Koreans just showing up for those tournaments and not really developing the regions. I was always much more in favour of a soft lock, and to this day. If a player (Polt being a great example) is making his life in another region, they’ll be playing consistently with players there and (hopefully) raising the level overall. Drop the prize pool versus Korea too by all means One of many Blizz mistakes IMO, I prefer that by far to a hard region lock, and I think the window to really salvage Kr has been passed That said I mean Kespa made a ton of mistakes, the scene when they arrived was as fragmented as it ever was and they never really tailored their product to where the viewership was. Region lock or running 3 separate big leagues with the same heavily funded prize pool. Either way you were taking from people who had SC2 as their full time job and were the best, to fund the existence of hobbyists. This isn't about the top of the top, serral might be serral in either system or maybe he has a bit less because he chose to stay in the weaker area. Or maybe he would have had to go to korea and actually faced the gauntlet. But the #8 or #15 WCS NA or EU player were they really deserving of that inflated money? Also to that same point you'd still have to take some away from the top as well. You could still foster a scene of development without giving the minor league the same cash injection as those who are on the top. And I'm cool with the locks or whatever I guess, but polt doesn't choose EU if it wasn't freer than KOR and the ratio of returns higher. Meanwhile if the distribution was properly given toward the best scene, would polt have moved? This isn't saying eliminate all funding for WCS abroad, but that it didn't deserve anywhere near the same consideration as KOR. And by the way this wasn't just in terms of money, but invites and WCS points that you got to benefit off of over other players who had to face the gauntlet every single event. Blizzard's butchering of their esports titles and attempts to control the scene are far too numerous and not limited to just SC2. They attempted to be the big dogs while butchering pretty much everything at the time. But the company has been in the toilet for so long that would be far too much to talk about in this thread. I do agree that KESPA made plenty of mistakes and overstepped in many ways as well. But Blizzard has killed or vastly limited the success of so many entities in their attempt to exist in esports, meanwhile Blizzard games in esports thrived without Blizzard interference for quite some time. It really doesn’t help when Saudi Arabia ESL are ploughing a million dollars into a mega-tournament in a scene with these clear structural issues. Personally let’s see I’ve got a magic wand, but this magic wand has its limits so I can’t say, prevent Kespa pulling out. I think you make good points, especially with WCS points and how they work regionally. Never been a big fan of that especially but it’s even more pronounced when WC tier events have kept big prize pools, but others have shrunk. - I’d cut the non-Korean prize pools a bit, plough that money into Korean tournaments. Be it extra GSLs per year, or some other banner. - Have a truly coordinated calendar, properly synced up so you don’t end up with the occasional clashes - I’d split WCS points into two separate categories. Internal regional classification, and an international standings one. I’d cut some spots awarded for events from the former and give to the latter. The rationale here is to cut a bit of region farming and reward folks who actually show up and can make deep runs at events with an open, high-quality field - As per the above, one would only earn those international points at things like international weekenders, WCS season finals and the likes. - Return to 2 WC tier events that are different in composition and what they’re meant to do. Where Blizzcon was basically always a smattering of top Koreans and a shot for people rewarded for regional performance, and Katowice was your best of the best, who’s hot and more open qualification. Just spitballing nonsense really, hopefully there’s the genesis of a thought in there somewhere!
Oh you're on point with a lot of this at least somewhat, which is why I wasn't going to go into it really, but the entire esports competitive twitch TO scene just has so many twists and turns to it. Yup you had ESL getting bought out. But you also had Riot and Valve in total control of the esports scene of some of their games making BANK. So Blizzard got jelly and thought they could do the same thing. They then cut out solid TO's who were able to put on amazing events and bascially cost 1000's of people their jobs, but made an inferior product IMO. This btw isn't limited to just SC2, but OWL and they even messed with WC and WoW at times as well sticking their greedy fingers in the pot. But meanwhile ESL and IEM and Dreamhack and MLG and I'm sure plenty of others were doing great work before Blizzard even had the thought to siphon money off their efforts until they could no longer afford to exist. Not only that, but Blizzard now owned by activision charging millions for franchise slots to rig a system and somewhat limit access was crazy too. Sure there is a challenger style league below that can make an attempt, but the barrier is massive, and the league teams with all that money are quite dominating.
I like the idea of money into GSL events, but honestly a dual run event like the old day or serious proleague addition would be cool too. Because then you're giving teams incentive to exist and you're brining a bit more structure into the scene. Maybe it doesn't work anymore, but something like that COULD have been cool. I only say it might not work anymore becuase what incentive do the best SC2 players have in joining a team a lot of the time now considering the money they're making and how much they're making while streaming. Who knows though maybe they'd like the challenge and the team paycheck.
10000% agree on the calendar. I would also note that any long event should either give way to a weekend event or not clash in some way, also that two longer term events should not run simultaneously. I would also have liked some sort of localized smaller and/or consistent event structure all over. WCS EU was too big for the talent it had. But if there were good weekend, maybe online events or smaller localized events you'd still have something for the up and coming players to grind at. Serral MIGHT waste a weekend driving to an event in his home country to win 10k max or 5kmax, but most likely he wouldn't especially if there was an online cup for 5k or whatever. So these smaller events would still give a ton of possibilities to those who want to go semi-pro or pro.
I think your ideas were fairly based to be honest. But the biggest issue remaining is that it still seems like Blizzard is in charge, and IMO they failed esports in too many ways, they have no business in it. Though they'll never leave either and the damage is done honestly. Hell I even forgot about NASL who popped up, had some great content, but was forced out eventually IIRC.
They also should be held accountable/responsible for rebuilding BW's scene because they in part destroyed it. Not that it might not have somewhat been less, but it was still going strong. Again won't happen, but would be nice.
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On June 25 2024 20:16 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2024 19:50 ejozl wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Sounds like Maru vs. Serral at Katowice.
Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit.
Rogue won 3 tournaments in a row and there was a 4th in close proximity. Reynor won 4 tournaments in a 3 month span. Dark won 2 tournaments in a row, a Blizzcon and a supertournament. On June 25 2024 03:29 WombaT wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. As I’ve said before, I think people are sleeping on quite how far Serral is currently ahead of his fellow Zergs Where previously there was a clear ‘big 4’ of Zerg, not unlike the tennis equivalent where it’s likely one of them is winning a big prize, who it is will depend on form and fine margins come tournament day. Now it’s more akin to the period a bit before/after they were all peaking, where Federer/Djokovic respectively were just the guy. PvZ is a bit less rough than some of those periods too, patches helped, herO’s innovations too. If herO’s involved, I give him a roughly 50% shot at worst of beating any Zerg on the planet in recent times, unless that Zerg happens to be Serral in which case he’s a big underdog for me. And I think overall other Toss have generally put in some more competitive performances in PvZ for a while now. Which I think is quite a contrast from other periods and metas where I think most would outright have favoured any of that Zerg ‘big 4’ in a ZvP against anyone really. Dark being older/a father, Rogue going to military and Reynor being in a slump play their parts too of course. But regardless of underlying factors it’s only really been Serral who’s kept up a vP and vT that’s consistently the best around, or very close Since 2017 herO is the only Protoss to win a GSL tournament or greater, that's a 7 year span whereas Dark, SoO, Rogue, Solar, Reynor and Serral have all won at least 1 Blizzcon, Katowice or GSL. Edit: Even Scarlett won Pyongchang. Scarlett didn't win Pyeonchang. The ling elevator did. More importantly, Stats won Code S and SSL in 2017 so....................
what happened to your data driven approach 
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On June 26 2024 10:38 Mizenhauer wrote:
I know it's not necessary, but I do apologize to those I'm arguing with just for the sake of arguing. I'm in the midst of a manic episode and it's definitely spilled into the discussion. It's good that there is room for conversation on these topics and it was good to see an interview with herO. I recognize I'm not contributing in any positive way so I'll step back for a bit.
Sorry to hear that you’re struggling personally. I hope everything gets better soon on that front.
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On June 26 2024 14:04 Scarlett` wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2024 20:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 19:50 ejozl wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Sounds like Maru vs. Serral at Katowice.
Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit.
Rogue won 3 tournaments in a row and there was a 4th in close proximity. Reynor won 4 tournaments in a 3 month span. Dark won 2 tournaments in a row, a Blizzcon and a supertournament. On June 25 2024 03:29 WombaT wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. As I’ve said before, I think people are sleeping on quite how far Serral is currently ahead of his fellow Zergs Where previously there was a clear ‘big 4’ of Zerg, not unlike the tennis equivalent where it’s likely one of them is winning a big prize, who it is will depend on form and fine margins come tournament day. Now it’s more akin to the period a bit before/after they were all peaking, where Federer/Djokovic respectively were just the guy. PvZ is a bit less rough than some of those periods too, patches helped, herO’s innovations too. If herO’s involved, I give him a roughly 50% shot at worst of beating any Zerg on the planet in recent times, unless that Zerg happens to be Serral in which case he’s a big underdog for me. And I think overall other Toss have generally put in some more competitive performances in PvZ for a while now. Which I think is quite a contrast from other periods and metas where I think most would outright have favoured any of that Zerg ‘big 4’ in a ZvP against anyone really. Dark being older/a father, Rogue going to military and Reynor being in a slump play their parts too of course. But regardless of underlying factors it’s only really been Serral who’s kept up a vP and vT that’s consistently the best around, or very close Since 2017 herO is the only Protoss to win a GSL tournament or greater, that's a 7 year span whereas Dark, SoO, Rogue, Solar, Reynor and Serral have all won at least 1 Blizzcon, Katowice or GSL. Edit: Even Scarlett won Pyongchang. Scarlett didn't win Pyeonchang. The ling elevator did. More importantly, Stats won Code S and SSL in 2017 so.................... what happened to your data driven approach
Lmao
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Northern Ireland24512 Posts
On June 26 2024 13:28 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 13:05 WombaT wrote:On June 26 2024 11:18 NoobSkills wrote:On June 26 2024 08:11 Balnazza wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:
[quote]
Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements.
When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently.
Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit.
Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. Sorry, but really, what are you talking about? First of all: Yes, it is completly natural to take away money from the top and award it to the bottom. Because if you only run top-heavy competitions, everyone else will drop out. That principle is true on every level. Very basic example: Maybe tournaments should only give out money to the winner? Because clearly that person worked and played harder than anyone else, so why should they also get money? Answer for that is obvious: You need money to get into the career. Because most players who start out the game won't be Maru and win tournaments with 14. And they won't be Serral and dominate the world as soon as they go full-time. But how do you justify going (semi-)pro with 18-20 after school? You justify it by getting money. You either get money because there are competitions for your "entry level" or because teams like in Proleague pay you. If you don't do that, one of two things happen: 1)Players go to college and don't play fulltime, because they need a career. But that naturally translates in worth results. 2)Players just don't go pro at all. In many sports, there are lower leagues, lower tournaments. These tournaments usually don't pay for themselves, but are financed by the S-Tier competition pumping in money. That is money "taken away" from better players, but it is necessary to ensure that people can get into the sports. This is especially important in SC2, since there is no guarantee that there will be any money. Last year for example there was a realistic chance that neither GSL nor EPT would continue in 2024. The region-lock was necessary to develop the talent in the world and let it get caught up. Which was also paying tribute to the fact that the key-audience is not in Korea. Now about "Blizzard messed up *hurrdurr*" --> No, they didn't? Atleast not in the way you think. They awarded money towards their own playing system, but didn't go into competition with Afreeca and GSL. And yet they paid a large sum of GSL prizepool. Even though Afreeca/GSL themselves did an extremly shitty job utilizing their actual audience, aka. foreign watchers. That is something they apparently only noticed last year. And it's not like Koreans didn't still get hefty perks compared to the rest of the world (e.g. eight BlizzCon slots vs. eight for the entire world). That was a clear sign to respect the tremendously strong playerbase in Korea. If the region-lock wasn't a thing, I'm pretty sure the korean scene would look the same as it does today, maybe even worse. But the entire rest of the world would definetly look tremendously worse. We might not even have gotten a Serral and a Reynor and a Clem. But without these top-dogs, ESL would probably also not invest anymore. Why invest in a game that isn't remotely present in your key-audience? It is okay to award some financial incentive towards the prospect/academy/lower level talent. It is not good to reward the lowest tiers of your sport equally to the highest tier. It takes money out of the pockets of those who are putting in the real work and donating it to the average or hobbyist. Especially in a system where you're essentially locked into not being able to compete for that big ticket due to the restrictions on WCS long term events. I'm not saying money should only go to the winner, what I'm saying it that #20 KOR had more invested, more time spent, and was a better player than #20 EU or NA, but received the same payout. How do you justify at that point going semi-pro or pro? Well hopefully you have a team supporting you, as well as a collection of smaller event wins that could easily do it. My point wasn't that #1 through #4 EU makes NO money, but that the scale should not be equal, especially when the events restrict individuals from playing in all of them. Meanwhile a weekend EU cup with a 3000 dollar first place that nobody else would bother considering would be free if you were that good or you'd be fine with the 1500 dollar 2nd palce. Either way you're still funding your pro career. You are right in many sports there are lower leagues and lower events. There were in SC as well. What there isn't is 3 separate NBA leagues all paying the same as the NA NBA league, where funds by the NBA top org are being divvied up equally amongst all scenes equally, so playing in EU against lesser talents is just as financially profitable as playing against the best, and is heavily supported by the numbers and revenue generated by the best players. As for blizzard messing up everything. Look no further than the state of all the esports under that umbrella lol. And no that is a separate issue beyond just the money siphon from SC2 into weaker scenes. It was the restrictions places on TO's. It was the money demanded from running outside events. And whatever funds you think were donated to the GSL is laughable considering their talent was what generated the revenue of most events lol. You are right the event runners who in part ran events for BW did struggle in SC2 when blizzard took over. Crazy how before that they were doing just fine in a game that Blizzard hadn't thought about the competitive atmosphere what so ever. You are right region lock wasn't what I was solely hinting at though it was a part. If you have months long events in 3 separate regions, nobody can compete for that prize pool in all 3. And honestly I think we still would have got those same players you mentioned, but they wouldn't have been receiving the money that should have been in the top system, nor free seeding into events through playing lesser talent. Does it change everything or anything? Don't know, but to claim those paths were anywhere near equal is foolish. On June 26 2024 08:13 WombaT wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:
[quote]
Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements.
When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently.
Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit.
Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. I didn’t like the WCS system when it wasn’t region locked, you still had the issue of Koreans just showing up for those tournaments and not really developing the regions. I was always much more in favour of a soft lock, and to this day. If a player (Polt being a great example) is making his life in another region, they’ll be playing consistently with players there and (hopefully) raising the level overall. Drop the prize pool versus Korea too by all means One of many Blizz mistakes IMO, I prefer that by far to a hard region lock, and I think the window to really salvage Kr has been passed That said I mean Kespa made a ton of mistakes, the scene when they arrived was as fragmented as it ever was and they never really tailored their product to where the viewership was. Region lock or running 3 separate big leagues with the same heavily funded prize pool. Either way you were taking from people who had SC2 as their full time job and were the best, to fund the existence of hobbyists. This isn't about the top of the top, serral might be serral in either system or maybe he has a bit less because he chose to stay in the weaker area. Or maybe he would have had to go to korea and actually faced the gauntlet. But the #8 or #15 WCS NA or EU player were they really deserving of that inflated money? Also to that same point you'd still have to take some away from the top as well. You could still foster a scene of development without giving the minor league the same cash injection as those who are on the top. And I'm cool with the locks or whatever I guess, but polt doesn't choose EU if it wasn't freer than KOR and the ratio of returns higher. Meanwhile if the distribution was properly given toward the best scene, would polt have moved? This isn't saying eliminate all funding for WCS abroad, but that it didn't deserve anywhere near the same consideration as KOR. And by the way this wasn't just in terms of money, but invites and WCS points that you got to benefit off of over other players who had to face the gauntlet every single event. Blizzard's butchering of their esports titles and attempts to control the scene are far too numerous and not limited to just SC2. They attempted to be the big dogs while butchering pretty much everything at the time. But the company has been in the toilet for so long that would be far too much to talk about in this thread. I do agree that KESPA made plenty of mistakes and overstepped in many ways as well. But Blizzard has killed or vastly limited the success of so many entities in their attempt to exist in esports, meanwhile Blizzard games in esports thrived without Blizzard interference for quite some time. It really doesn’t help when Saudi Arabia ESL are ploughing a million dollars into a mega-tournament in a scene with these clear structural issues. Personally let’s see I’ve got a magic wand, but this magic wand has its limits so I can’t say, prevent Kespa pulling out. I think you make good points, especially with WCS points and how they work regionally. Never been a big fan of that especially but it’s even more pronounced when WC tier events have kept big prize pools, but others have shrunk. - I’d cut the non-Korean prize pools a bit, plough that money into Korean tournaments. Be it extra GSLs per year, or some other banner. - Have a truly coordinated calendar, properly synced up so you don’t end up with the occasional clashes - I’d split WCS points into two separate categories. Internal regional classification, and an international standings one. I’d cut some spots awarded for events from the former and give to the latter. The rationale here is to cut a bit of region farming and reward folks who actually show up and can make deep runs at events with an open, high-quality field - As per the above, one would only earn those international points at things like international weekenders, WCS season finals and the likes. - Return to 2 WC tier events that are different in composition and what they’re meant to do. Where Blizzcon was basically always a smattering of top Koreans and a shot for people rewarded for regional performance, and Katowice was your best of the best, who’s hot and more open qualification. Just spitballing nonsense really, hopefully there’s the genesis of a thought in there somewhere! Oh you're on point with a lot of this at least somewhat, which is why I wasn't going to go into it really, but the entire esports competitive twitch TO scene just has so many twists and turns to it. Yup you had ESL getting bought out. But you also had Riot and Valve in total control of the esports scene of some of their games making BANK. So Blizzard got jelly and thought they could do the same thing. They then cut out solid TO's who were able to put on amazing events and bascially cost 1000's of people their jobs, but made an inferior product IMO. This btw isn't limited to just SC2, but OWL and they even messed with WC and WoW at times as well sticking their greedy fingers in the pot. But meanwhile ESL and IEM and Dreamhack and MLG and I'm sure plenty of others were doing great work before Blizzard even had the thought to siphon money off their efforts until they could no longer afford to exist. Not only that, but Blizzard now owned by activision charging millions for franchise slots to rig a system and somewhat limit access was crazy too. Sure there is a challenger style league below that can make an attempt, but the barrier is massive, and the league teams with all that money are quite dominating. I like the idea of money into GSL events, but honestly a dual run event like the old day or serious proleague addition would be cool too. Because then you're giving teams incentive to exist and you're brining a bit more structure into the scene. Maybe it doesn't work anymore, but something like that COULD have been cool. I only say it might not work anymore becuase what incentive do the best SC2 players have in joining a team a lot of the time now considering the money they're making and how much they're making while streaming. Who knows though maybe they'd like the challenge and the team paycheck. 10000% agree on the calendar. I would also note that any long event should either give way to a weekend event or not clash in some way, also that two longer term events should not run simultaneously. I would also have liked some sort of localized smaller and/or consistent event structure all over. WCS EU was too big for the talent it had. But if there were good weekend, maybe online events or smaller localized events you'd still have something for the up and coming players to grind at. Serral MIGHT waste a weekend driving to an event in his home country to win 10k max or 5kmax, but most likely he wouldn't especially if there was an online cup for 5k or whatever. So these smaller events would still give a ton of possibilities to those who want to go semi-pro or pro. I think your ideas were fairly based to be honest. But the biggest issue remaining is that it still seems like Blizzard is in charge, and IMO they failed esports in too many ways, they have no business in it. Though they'll never leave either and the damage is done honestly. Hell I even forgot about NASL who popped up, had some great content, but was forced out eventually IIRC. They also should be held accountable/responsible for rebuilding BW's scene because they in part destroyed it. Not that it might not have somewhat been less, but it was still going strong. Again won't happen, but would be nice.
It’s wild to me that it’s basically a game that’s never had an overall structure that’s right, but through its time has had all the constituent parts just never simultaneously.
I think most people want basically 3 things in an eSport, not always equally or indeed all of them, but largely. The best facing off at least semi-regularly, a scene that is easy to follow and understand, and some kind of structure that might help your hometown heroes or at least regional ones develop and be competitive.
It shouldn’t be that hard to get a structure that largely facilitates that. I will partly blame Blizz for this obviously but I don’t think they’re alone in this either. I don’t think ESL have been much better custodians and I highly disagree with many facets of the EWC as well. If memory serves other tournament orgs were crippled as much by bad business decisions as Blizz being particularly culpable there.
I mean there have been plenty of cool events that have a unique flavour that haven’t exactly been helped out much by other orgs. Be it calendars, be it monetarily.
Nationwars and Homestory Cups spring to mind, great events nonetheless!
Agreed on the WCS Europe format at times, too long for a player pool where there’s big gaps. But for me that could have been a very good format for a Korean competition when they had 30+ really bloody good pros. Whereas when there were non-GSL individual leagues often the format was more, not less cutthroat.
I guess across the board there’s been a certain lack of adaptability when it comes to conditions, be it player’s livelihoods and sustainability or how that links into audience tastes.
Be that Blizzard wanting to run things when they should have been facilitators and a link between various orgs and scenes, ESL broadly doing much the same, or Kespa kinda just wanting to wholly transplant how they did BW to a very different game. Nobody’s really been properly able to bring the Chinese scene more into wider visibility, plus some political issues there which was a real pity too.
Hey it’s been a clusterfuck at many a time, but it’s been a great bloody game to follow over the years to be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom! Just feels many a misstep prevented it from being that little bit greater.
Here’s to at least a few many more years!
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United States1808 Posts
On June 26 2024 14:04 Scarlett` wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2024 20:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 19:50 ejozl wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Sounds like Maru vs. Serral at Katowice.
Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit.
Rogue won 3 tournaments in a row and there was a 4th in close proximity. Reynor won 4 tournaments in a 3 month span. Dark won 2 tournaments in a row, a Blizzcon and a supertournament. On June 25 2024 03:29 WombaT wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:On June 22 2024 04:52 Cactus66 wrote:
I get the impression from the pros they don't think it's much of a goat debate. Usually a bit of a smirk or laugh when describing how it's just different having to play serral. At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again. IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. As I’ve said before, I think people are sleeping on quite how far Serral is currently ahead of his fellow Zergs Where previously there was a clear ‘big 4’ of Zerg, not unlike the tennis equivalent where it’s likely one of them is winning a big prize, who it is will depend on form and fine margins come tournament day. Now it’s more akin to the period a bit before/after they were all peaking, where Federer/Djokovic respectively were just the guy. PvZ is a bit less rough than some of those periods too, patches helped, herO’s innovations too. If herO’s involved, I give him a roughly 50% shot at worst of beating any Zerg on the planet in recent times, unless that Zerg happens to be Serral in which case he’s a big underdog for me. And I think overall other Toss have generally put in some more competitive performances in PvZ for a while now. Which I think is quite a contrast from other periods and metas where I think most would outright have favoured any of that Zerg ‘big 4’ in a ZvP against anyone really. Dark being older/a father, Rogue going to military and Reynor being in a slump play their parts too of course. But regardless of underlying factors it’s only really been Serral who’s kept up a vP and vT that’s consistently the best around, or very close Since 2017 herO is the only Protoss to win a GSL tournament or greater, that's a 7 year span whereas Dark, SoO, Rogue, Solar, Reynor and Serral have all won at least 1 Blizzcon, Katowice or GSL. Edit: Even Scarlett won Pyongchang. Scarlett didn't win Pyeonchang. The ling elevator did. More importantly, Stats won Code S and SSL in 2017 so.................... what happened to your data driven approach
I got lost in the sauce. From one shit poster to another I greatly adore our occasional encounters on this website over the years. Nothing but respect on my end. 
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France12762 Posts
On June 26 2024 10:38 Mizenhauer wrote:
I know it's not necessary, but I do apologize to those I'm arguing with just for the sake of arguing. I'm in the midst of a manic episode and it's definitely spilled into the discussion. It's good that there is room for conversation on these topics and it was good to see an interview with herO. I recognize I'm not contributing in any positive way so I'll step back for a bit.
Take care of yourself and thanks for the work you put in the whole list / articles.
Arguing for the sake of arguing might seem pointless, but it shows there are still a lot of people with passion for this old old game, so personally I think it's good.
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On June 26 2024 11:18 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 08:11 Balnazza wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course
I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral
While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again.
IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. Sorry, but really, what are you talking about? First of all: Yes, it is completly natural to take away money from the top and award it to the bottom. Because if you only run top-heavy competitions, everyone else will drop out. That principle is true on every level. Very basic example: Maybe tournaments should only give out money to the winner? Because clearly that person worked and played harder than anyone else, so why should they also get money? Answer for that is obvious: You need money to get into the career. Because most players who start out the game won't be Maru and win tournaments with 14. And they won't be Serral and dominate the world as soon as they go full-time. But how do you justify going (semi-)pro with 18-20 after school? You justify it by getting money. You either get money because there are competitions for your "entry level" or because teams like in Proleague pay you. If you don't do that, one of two things happen: 1)Players go to college and don't play fulltime, because they need a career. But that naturally translates in worth results. 2)Players just don't go pro at all. In many sports, there are lower leagues, lower tournaments. These tournaments usually don't pay for themselves, but are financed by the S-Tier competition pumping in money. That is money "taken away" from better players, but it is necessary to ensure that people can get into the sports. This is especially important in SC2, since there is no guarantee that there will be any money. Last year for example there was a realistic chance that neither GSL nor EPT would continue in 2024. The region-lock was necessary to develop the talent in the world and let it get caught up. Which was also paying tribute to the fact that the key-audience is not in Korea. Now about "Blizzard messed up *hurrdurr*" --> No, they didn't? Atleast not in the way you think. They awarded money towards their own playing system, but didn't go into competition with Afreeca and GSL. And yet they paid a large sum of GSL prizepool. Even though Afreeca/GSL themselves did an extremly shitty job utilizing their actual audience, aka. foreign watchers. That is something they apparently only noticed last year. And it's not like Koreans didn't still get hefty perks compared to the rest of the world (e.g. eight BlizzCon slots vs. eight for the entire world). That was a clear sign to respect the tremendously strong playerbase in Korea. If the region-lock wasn't a thing, I'm pretty sure the korean scene would look the same as it does today, maybe even worse. But the entire rest of the world would definetly look tremendously worse. We might not even have gotten a Serral and a Reynor and a Clem. But without these top-dogs, ESL would probably also not invest anymore. Why invest in a game that isn't remotely present in your key-audience? It is okay to award some financial incentive towards the prospect/academy/lower level talent. It is not good to reward the lowest tiers of your sport equally to the highest tier. It takes money out of the pockets of those who are putting in the real work and donating it to the average or hobbyist. Especially in a system where you're essentially locked into not being able to compete for that big ticket due to the restrictions on WCS long term events. I'm not saying money should only go to the winner, what I'm saying it that #20 KOR had more invested, more time spent, and was a better player than #20 EU or NA, but received the same payout. How do you justify at that point going semi-pro or pro? Well hopefully you have a team supporting you, as well as a collection of smaller event wins that could easily do it. My point wasn't that #1 through #4 EU makes NO money, but that the scale should not be equal, especially when the events restrict individuals from playing in all of them. Meanwhile a weekend EU cup with a 3000 dollar first place that nobody else would bother considering would be free if you were that good or you'd be fine with the 1500 dollar 2nd palce. Either way you're still funding your pro career. You are right in many sports there are lower leagues and lower events. There were in SC as well. What there isn't is 3 separate NBA leagues all paying the same as the NA NBA league, where funds by the NBA top org are being divvied up equally amongst all scenes equally, so playing in EU against lesser talents is just as financially profitable as playing against the best, and is heavily supported by the numbers and revenue generated by the best players. As for blizzard messing up everything. Look no further than the state of all the esports under that umbrella lol. And no that is a separate issue beyond just the money siphon from SC2 into weaker scenes. It was the restrictions places on TO's. It was the money demanded from running outside events. And whatever funds you think were donated to the GSL is laughable considering their talent was what generated the revenue of most events lol. You are right the event runners who in part ran events for BW did struggle in SC2 when blizzard took over. Crazy how before that they were doing just fine in a game that Blizzard hadn't thought about the competitive atmosphere what so ever. You are right region lock wasn't what I was solely hinting at though it was a part. If you have months long events in 3 separate regions, nobody can compete for that prize pool in all 3. And honestly I think we still would have got those same players you mentioned, but they wouldn't have been receiving the money that should have been in the top system, nor free seeding into events through playing lesser talent. Does it change everything or anything? Don't know, but to claim those paths were anywhere near equal is foolish. Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 08:13 WombaT wrote:On June 26 2024 06:53 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 19:00 WombaT wrote:On June 25 2024 13:54 NoobSkills wrote:On June 25 2024 06:27 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 24 2024 22:02 lokol4890 wrote:On June 24 2024 20:52 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 24 2024 19:46 ejozl wrote:On June 23 2024 01:27 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
At least these days, there is the ‘all time’ part of course
I’d give herO at least, if not better than 50/50 shot against any other player in PvZ right now, and basically a 0% if it’s Serral
While his ZvT is good enough to sweep Clem and Maru at Katowice, or beat an on-fire Oliveira and sweep Maru recently, his ZvP is somehow even better again.
IMO the single best matchup any player has had in SC2. A few years ago Zerg was just generally dunking on Protoss so Serral doing so wasn’t atypical, but he’s kept that almost invincibility while his peers no longer have it I'm pretty sure herO would've put up a better fight against Serral than Maru. ... ... whereas Dark, Reynor and Rogue could go on a domination spree similar to Serral Gonna put a big citation needed on these statements. When Serral and herO last played, Serral completely crushed him. His army movement and understanding of where he was in the game and on the map was just better, consistently. Those three Zergs have all had some high peaks, but none of them have ever kept it looking consistent like Serral has. They may dominate a tournament, maybe two in Rogue's case, but not a year, let alone five or six in a row. Further, they had those peaks before a substantial weakening of banelings, which doesn't seem to have affected Serral the least bit. Can you cite when serral dominated 5 years? Winning one or two tournaments a year is not the same as dominating. Are we literally just ignoring how the other top 3 zergs (reynor, rogue, dark) since 2019 all the way through 2023 were winning a bunch of stuff? Serral literally won almost everything he touched during that spam The majority of the stuff dark and rogue won was in Korea, which Serral didn’t bother attending. And when he did go to Korea, he went 2/2 winning 2 GSLs Dark and rogue never had to go through Serral to win their championship. They had to rely on their peers to pull an upset such as rag, solar, etc. I believe only sOO and innovation won their championship by going through Serral "Dark and rouge never had to go through serral to win their championship" Sure, they got to dodge one or two talented players who MAYBE could have messed them up. Serral got to dodge the entirety of the most talented players in the game by farming far weaker scenes, which fueled his invites to those events where the worst korean at that event had a harder path to it than any of the EU/NA that could have been there. I wonder how many cutoffs he would or wouldn't have made if everyone was forced to play everyone at all events instead of getting a free bypass by playing the weaker WCS scene. Maybe nothing changes, but maybe facing top talent with a week+ of prep time would have cost him. I get not wanting to face that gauntlet and staying home and farming free money and WCS points etc. Makes sense to be honest, but I'm not sure you suddenly get upgraded to GOAT status when you were playing T-Ball while everyone else is dodging 100 MPH fastballs. This is exactly why the WCS system in its current form worked for developing players, they didn’t have to immediately be competing with a stacked Korean playerbase off the bat until/if they’re ready to make that step up. And on the flipside there is that step up, which was made. This goes both ways in that the player operating in a weaker region doesn’t get as high a standard of competition when it does come to doing battle with Korea’s best. And additionally, Serral has the best vKorean record in the game’s history despite generally only playing Korean opposition who’ve passed various qualification hurdles and not those lower down the pyramid. I like my sports comparisons even if they don’t always 100% mesh exactly. The vast majority of the world’s best basketball players are in the NBA, but if some bloke showed up who was top 1-5 in the world by most’s reckonings who never set foot in it, isn’t that arguably a bigger feat? Or as per your comparison the guy who’s not used to facing 100 MPH fastballs enters competition where he is and adapts almost immediately. I’ve said it a million times, eventually Blizz/ESL largely got the structure right for foreign players, but they and other orgs dropped the ball with Korea. No sport in the world operates without tiers of competition that lead up to the elite. I get why the WCS and talent all over the world thing was nice. But it was also right equal money, taken away from the peak of competition to fund lower events no? But can't change the past, not sure I would even, but I'm also not sure that financial issues didn't stop some players in Korea, where the competition was in fact harder. You are right though, he had weaker practice in those competitions, and he may have the best vKorean record in the game. But if he were held to the same standard, as those Koreans would that be true? If he had to farm his WCS points while facing off against individuals who has a week+ to practice for specifically him, could he have made it to those events in the first place? The answer is probably, but would it have been all of them? I don't think so. But you are right he did have the upper level talent to be at those big events, but so did many of those who were playing in the Korean scene who didn't make the cut due to numbers they had to get through in a harder competition. In your NBA judgement how is that person getting there and making themselves into a top 5? Did he get to play against Santa's Elfs in the north poll league every year and get free seeding into the NBA finals? Skipping out on the regular season and the playoffs? I think Blizzard dropped the ball with all of esports and butchered every single thing possible, but that has nothing to do with WCS or serral really. That their project, limitations, requirements not only for Korea, but also the rest of the world destroyed Blizzard esports. Yes, you do want a competitive atmosphere for building up talent. But creating top tier events with mandatory long time period of play, with a bunch of money all spread out doing that? Is paying the #20 guy in EU or NA the same money as the #20 KOR really fair? Did they all play just as hard? In other esports there are side events smaller events for competition until you're ready to be a big dog. Blizzard through amateurs in to T1 paying events and basically time locked others from having a chance because they all ran at the same time. I didn’t like the WCS system when it wasn’t region locked, you still had the issue of Koreans just showing up for those tournaments and not really developing the regions. I was always much more in favour of a soft lock, and to this day. If a player (Polt being a great example) is making his life in another region, they’ll be playing consistently with players there and (hopefully) raising the level overall. Drop the prize pool versus Korea too by all means One of many Blizz mistakes IMO, I prefer that by far to a hard region lock, and I think the window to really salvage Kr has been passed That said I mean Kespa made a ton of mistakes, the scene when they arrived was as fragmented as it ever was and they never really tailored their product to where the viewership was. Region lock or running 3 separate big leagues with the same heavily funded prize pool. Either way you were taking from people who had SC2 as their full time job and were the best, to fund the existence of hobbyists. This isn't about the top of the top, serral might be serral in either system or maybe he has a bit less because he chose to stay in the weaker area. Or maybe he would have had to go to korea and actually faced the gauntlet. But the #8 or #15 WCS NA or EU player were they really deserving of that inflated money? Also to that same point you'd still have to take some away from the top as well. You could still foster a scene of development without giving the minor league the same cash injection as those who are on the top. And I'm cool with the locks or whatever I guess, but polt doesn't choose EU if it wasn't freer than KOR and the ratio of returns higher. Meanwhile if the distribution was properly given toward the best scene, would polt have moved? This isn't saying eliminate all funding for WCS abroad, but that it didn't deserve anywhere near the same consideration as KOR. And by the way this wasn't just in terms of money, but invites and WCS points that you got to benefit off of over other players who had to face the gauntlet every single event. Blizzard's butchering of their esports titles and attempts to control the scene are far too numerous and not limited to just SC2. They attempted to be the big dogs while butchering pretty much everything at the time. But the company has been in the toilet for so long that would be far too much to talk about in this thread. I do agree that KESPA made plenty of mistakes and overstepped in many ways as well. But Blizzard has killed or vastly limited the success of so many entities in their attempt to exist in esports, meanwhile Blizzard games in esports thrived without Blizzard interference for quite some time.
I was thinking about answering to all points in detail, but it's just too hot here, I'm sorry. So I will give general answers and hope to cover everything.
"The money Blizzard put into GSL was laughable"
When Blizzard stopped the funding for SC2 at the end of 2022, the Prizepool between GSL seasons dropped from 123K to 52K, essentially being halved. And remember that already includes crowdfunding for GSL from '23 forward. So you *might* want to reconsider the statement that Blizzard wasn't paying anything. Pirzepools for ESL events btw dropped only about 25%. So either ESL put in a lot more money into the game than Afreeca or Blizzard didn't fund ESL as heavy as GSL.
"The Blizzard licensing killed TOs"
I will admit, I wasn't around in the first year or something like that for SC2. Back then I was admin/caster for WC3CL and was a bit anti-SC2 and anti-change. Our league was thinking about putting up a second league for SC2 though right from the get-go and the licensing was already a topic. So I'm almost certain that the fact that Blizzard wanted to run the show to a degree was the plan from release on. Either way, this means Blizzard did not kill any TOs that were already running SC2 competitions - they all operated under that label.
That was at the time rather new. Pre-2010, no game developer really invested anything into Esports. It was all about ESL, DreamHack, ESWC, WCG and so on...private companies, usually barely in communication with the developer at all.
Today, every big developer controls their Esport. Riot started it together with Blizzard (or Blizzard was even first?), but it is the industry standard by now. Valve for example did a string of decisions recently regarding CS2, for example they decided that partnership-depending tournaments were forbidden from 2025 onwards. And you know what? ESL and BLAST both had to follow and accept that decision. That basically really is like the FIBA saying "no, Franchising is banned now" and the NBA goes "haha, okay boss, will do!".
Anyway, back to Blizzard. They wanted to run the show for multiple reasons. And they clearly envisioned SC2 as a global Esports. They didn't look towards BroodWar, which was extremly bad in that regard. They looked towards WC3.
And still, at the start, they let it run its course, with multiple tournament organizers doing their things. A lot of them probably vanishing because Esports isn't a particularly suistainable business and the Financial Crisis of 2014. WCS got introduced a good chunk later and remember, the first one was this national into regional into global system that was actually really cool, but not particularly thought-through yet. Only after that developed the WCS-system.
Now, you might think and say the Licensing-Rules were greedy or whatever. Might be. But there is another aspect of it. Grubby recently talked about this in a video, I think it was about "What's good an bad in SC2?". And one thing he said was that Blizzard essentially ended the Wild-West regarding Esports-Events. Please don't quote me on it, but I think Grubby mentioned that he like almost missed like 25% and up to 50% of the prizepool he technically earned in WC3, because TOs wouldn't pay him out. He said "you would just show up to an event an play and simply would not get paid at all". Either because TOs really just scammed the players or because they went bankrupt. ESWC for example had a rule in their player contract that they only had to payout prizemoney in a timespan of two years. And I think ESL also wasn't particularly fast in paying out back in the day. Goody protested that once, I think he mentioned a delay of six to nine month?
With the Licensing and Blizzard taking over, that stopped. Now players would not only get their money, but they would get it in a reasonable timeframe. I'm pretty sure if you ask a player if he or she prefers to either play ten events for ten different TOs or three events for the same but get paid all three events guaranteed...I'm pretty certain there is a clear favorite here.
"Money shouldn't be taken from the top and awarded to lesser regions to such a degree"
You need to if you want a global playing field to entertain a global viewership. You bring up the NBA: You are forgetting something here though. The NBA isn't the only basketball-league in the world. It's of course the largest, most important and financially strongest, zero doubt about that. But there are basketball leagues all around the world, especially in Europe. So if you are an aspiring basketball player in Germany, you don't need to hope to get a scholarship for an american College and then either go into the NBA or stop playing Basketball. You can make a career playing Basketball in Germany. Then maybe in Europe. And eventually, you might get to play in the NBA. In return, lots of americans aren't starved out of Basketball if they don't make it into the NBA, but they can go abroad. Again, in Germany, I know for a fact that every team in the third highest Basketball league, which is basically the first one that plays somewhat professional, each team has usually two or three US-players. Now you might say "aha, so region lock is bad, see!", but there is a region-lock. Teams are only allowed that many non-EU-players. Exactly to help develop own talent and protect the local players.
This excourse is an example of course. But the think is, that Esport doesn't work like that exactly. For one, money isn't as big as it is in Basketball, so you can't particularly lower the money per region over and over before there is no money at all. But SC2, like all Esports, has other differences to regular sport aswell. It is usually less "grassroots" and more top-heavy and internationally oriented. There is no "natural distribution" of money in SC2, the money is were Blizzard puts it (atleast in the past, now there is actual natural distribution, with ESL pumping money into it while the korean scene struggles).
And as I said before: The goal wasn't to recreate Proleague and OSL/MSL. The goal was to recreate the global success of WC3, with a global playerbase. And it somewhat worked. We have an international viewership and lots of foreigner players. Which I'm certain we wouldn't have if Blizzards entire plan would have been "here Kespa, take our money and do what you want, the rest of the world will git gud on their own and eventually join Proleague LUL."
"There should be smaller tournaments and also teams can provide the money players need"
There always have been regional, smaller tournaments. Often though they didn't pay out enough money, which makes sense. With the rise of Twitch and the heavy promotion of international tournaments, local TOs struggled to provide a product that could earn money.
And as for teams...well, they simply can't provide said money. Easy as that. There are reasons for that of course.
First of all, they did that in the past. In WC3, prizemoney was often incredibly top-heavy. We are talking events with 50+ players and only the Top 3 got any prizemoney (hi ESWC again!). So teams filled in to a heavy degree. But in turn, the teamleagues that existed nearly didn't pay out enough money to fund said teams. We are talking finals that teams had to win to even cover their travelcosts.
But Esport was brand new and a lot of sponsors were ready to pump in the money to finance teams like MYM and 4Kings. And then 2008 happened and a lot of companies cut their fundings. And the WC3-moneybubble bursted, with an incredible shutdown of teams.
For SC2, teams and organisations that survived tried to be healthier. But the money they didn't pay anymore needed to come from somewhere and that were tournaments. Proleague of course didn't have any of these problems. For one, being entirely offline and very popular in Korea, I assume Proleague generated quite the revenue. And then all teams were owned by the big korean Groups, who had a PR-based interest to invest. Be it SKT (I was shocked to learn that this does not stand for "South Korean Telecom" btw...anyone else?), the KT Group, Samsung...you get it.
With the focus of SC2 being even more on 1v1 competition, teams had a harder time generating revenue...not that it is easy to generate revenue in Esports anyway. So it would be suicide for the scene to put all the "develop talent"-duties on teams who can't really afford that.
I'm sure I've missed some of your points, but again, this is already taking too long in the heat. So I hope I covered the important things.
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I would very much like to have a clue on DRG's, Gumiho's, Byun's view on whos GOAT. Cus they are the ones who have been around in pro scene among the best that long...
We, from the outside, need to make sense from differently quantifyable numbers. I'd like to know what their gut + experience say.
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On June 26 2024 04:32 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 02:58 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 25 2024 18:02 Pandain wrote:On June 25 2024 16:58 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 15:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I know that in that statement you also said it's worth about the same as an average ESL/Blizzard WC, which I highly disagree, but the large majority would agree that in a "data-driven approach", WCS and Katowice (especially when officially a WC that year) are worth more than a KIL or a WESG. Of which Maru is sorely lacking. The only thing that makes a WC harder to win than Code S is if a superior player (who doesn't compete in KR) is added to the player pool (aka Serral post 2017). I had to make a fair number of generalities in the intro (and during player entries) to avoid writing thousands of words about the minute differences between tournaments, despite the fact that I had to account for all of them during research. I want to note that I'm not arguing in favor or Serral or Maru for GOAT, I'm simply defending the work I put in. I'm extremely confident that my evaluation process was far more rigorous than that utilized by others. A forum poster or someone putting out a 5-10 minute video doesn't have to worry about dealing with the most scrupulous and demanding editor in the history of StarCraft II (Wax never gets the credit he deserves) and I can 100% assure you that if I didn't put in the required amount of work that those articles would never have been posted. I'm fine with people thinking I am incorrect, but my standard when it comes to determining whether or not a counter argument is viable is extremely high. Not everyone would believe that harder automatically = more prestigious or important, even if there's a relationship between the two. Case in point, I would hope everyone would believe that someone who won nine world championships would pretty much automatically be the GOAT. Conversely, it's not at all clear Maru is. To be fair to Mizen, GSL was the most prestigious tournament for the first few years of sc2 existence. However that is no longer the case for close to almost a decade now. Also Maru only started to win the GSL when it lost its meaning already. I know people will dispute this point to boost Maru but that’s the truth. Maru can barely win anything outside of Korea. Being a big fish in a small pond does not = goat contender The only tournaments people care about or the hardest tournaments to win are the ones Serral are attending. Everything else just pretty much or feels like a tier B tournament. Also I believe most people couldn’t care less what anyone’s result were in the pro league. It’s already proven it was a fix league so any result is automatically voided I’m sure Mizen did lots of research into his data but stats/data are flawed and bias. It’s like people saying Lebron is a goat contender because of his “stats”, when the general consensus was will and always will be Jordan. Serral ESL Spring 2024 path: Serral(W) Nice Serral(W) herO Serral(W) Oliviera Serral(W) Maru Maru GSL S1 2024 path: Maru(W) soO Maru(W) Shin Maru(W) Classic Maru(L) herO Maru(W) Classic Maru(W) Cure Maru(W) herO
Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path
Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
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Northern Ireland24512 Posts
On June 26 2024 23:05 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 04:32 Argonauta wrote:On June 26 2024 02:58 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 25 2024 18:02 Pandain wrote:On June 25 2024 16:58 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 15:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I know that in that statement you also said it's worth about the same as an average ESL/Blizzard WC, which I highly disagree, but the large majority would agree that in a "data-driven approach", WCS and Katowice (especially when officially a WC that year) are worth more than a KIL or a WESG. Of which Maru is sorely lacking. The only thing that makes a WC harder to win than Code S is if a superior player (who doesn't compete in KR) is added to the player pool (aka Serral post 2017). I had to make a fair number of generalities in the intro (and during player entries) to avoid writing thousands of words about the minute differences between tournaments, despite the fact that I had to account for all of them during research. I want to note that I'm not arguing in favor or Serral or Maru for GOAT, I'm simply defending the work I put in. I'm extremely confident that my evaluation process was far more rigorous than that utilized by others. A forum poster or someone putting out a 5-10 minute video doesn't have to worry about dealing with the most scrupulous and demanding editor in the history of StarCraft II (Wax never gets the credit he deserves) and I can 100% assure you that if I didn't put in the required amount of work that those articles would never have been posted. I'm fine with people thinking I am incorrect, but my standard when it comes to determining whether or not a counter argument is viable is extremely high. Not everyone would believe that harder automatically = more prestigious or important, even if there's a relationship between the two. Case in point, I would hope everyone would believe that someone who won nine world championships would pretty much automatically be the GOAT. Conversely, it's not at all clear Maru is. To be fair to Mizen, GSL was the most prestigious tournament for the first few years of sc2 existence. However that is no longer the case for close to almost a decade now. Also Maru only started to win the GSL when it lost its meaning already. I know people will dispute this point to boost Maru but that’s the truth. Maru can barely win anything outside of Korea. Being a big fish in a small pond does not = goat contender The only tournaments people care about or the hardest tournaments to win are the ones Serral are attending. Everything else just pretty much or feels like a tier B tournament. Also I believe most people couldn’t care less what anyone’s result were in the pro league. It’s already proven it was a fix league so any result is automatically voided I’m sure Mizen did lots of research into his data but stats/data are flawed and bias. It’s like people saying Lebron is a goat contender because of his “stats”, when the general consensus was will and always will be Jordan. Serral ESL Spring 2024 path: Serral(W) Nice Serral(W) herO Serral(W) Oliviera Serral(W) Maru Maru GSL S1 2024 path: Maru(W) soO Maru(W) Shin Maru(W) Classic Maru(L) herO Maru(W) Classic Maru(W) Cure Maru(W) herO Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
Cure? :S
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On June 26 2024 23:05 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 04:32 Argonauta wrote:On June 26 2024 02:58 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 25 2024 18:02 Pandain wrote:On June 25 2024 16:58 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 15:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I know that in that statement you also said it's worth about the same as an average ESL/Blizzard WC, which I highly disagree, but the large majority would agree that in a "data-driven approach", WCS and Katowice (especially when officially a WC that year) are worth more than a KIL or a WESG. Of which Maru is sorely lacking. The only thing that makes a WC harder to win than Code S is if a superior player (who doesn't compete in KR) is added to the player pool (aka Serral post 2017). I had to make a fair number of generalities in the intro (and during player entries) to avoid writing thousands of words about the minute differences between tournaments, despite the fact that I had to account for all of them during research. I want to note that I'm not arguing in favor or Serral or Maru for GOAT, I'm simply defending the work I put in. I'm extremely confident that my evaluation process was far more rigorous than that utilized by others. A forum poster or someone putting out a 5-10 minute video doesn't have to worry about dealing with the most scrupulous and demanding editor in the history of StarCraft II (Wax never gets the credit he deserves) and I can 100% assure you that if I didn't put in the required amount of work that those articles would never have been posted. I'm fine with people thinking I am incorrect, but my standard when it comes to determining whether or not a counter argument is viable is extremely high. Not everyone would believe that harder automatically = more prestigious or important, even if there's a relationship between the two. Case in point, I would hope everyone would believe that someone who won nine world championships would pretty much automatically be the GOAT. Conversely, it's not at all clear Maru is. To be fair to Mizen, GSL was the most prestigious tournament for the first few years of sc2 existence. However that is no longer the case for close to almost a decade now. Also Maru only started to win the GSL when it lost its meaning already. I know people will dispute this point to boost Maru but that’s the truth. Maru can barely win anything outside of Korea. Being a big fish in a small pond does not = goat contender The only tournaments people care about or the hardest tournaments to win are the ones Serral are attending. Everything else just pretty much or feels like a tier B tournament. Also I believe most people couldn’t care less what anyone’s result were in the pro league. It’s already proven it was a fix league so any result is automatically voided I’m sure Mizen did lots of research into his data but stats/data are flawed and bias. It’s like people saying Lebron is a goat contender because of his “stats”, when the general consensus was will and always will be Jordan. Serral ESL Spring 2024 path: Serral(W) Nice Serral(W) herO Serral(W) Oliviera Serral(W) Maru Maru GSL S1 2024 path: Maru(W) soO Maru(W) Shin Maru(W) Classic Maru(L) herO Maru(W) Classic Maru(W) Cure Maru(W) herO Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
It's crazy how much any player that takes maps off Serral gets overrated. Oliveira just has a weirdly good matchup vs Serral atm he is still worse than most of the Koreans. Classic has a very favored all time record and even in the last 12 months is 50-50 vs him. Same thing with Shin who actually has a dominant record vs Oliveira even when only looking at 2024 series. Cure is definitely better than Oliveira as well both head to head and vs pretty much every player in the world besides Serral.
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Northern Ireland24512 Posts
On June 27 2024 02:17 JJH777 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 23:05 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 26 2024 04:32 Argonauta wrote:On June 26 2024 02:58 Blitzball04 wrote:On June 25 2024 18:02 Pandain wrote:On June 25 2024 16:58 Mizenhauer wrote:On June 25 2024 15:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I know that in that statement you also said it's worth about the same as an average ESL/Blizzard WC, which I highly disagree, but the large majority would agree that in a "data-driven approach", WCS and Katowice (especially when officially a WC that year) are worth more than a KIL or a WESG. Of which Maru is sorely lacking. The only thing that makes a WC harder to win than Code S is if a superior player (who doesn't compete in KR) is added to the player pool (aka Serral post 2017). I had to make a fair number of generalities in the intro (and during player entries) to avoid writing thousands of words about the minute differences between tournaments, despite the fact that I had to account for all of them during research. I want to note that I'm not arguing in favor or Serral or Maru for GOAT, I'm simply defending the work I put in. I'm extremely confident that my evaluation process was far more rigorous than that utilized by others. A forum poster or someone putting out a 5-10 minute video doesn't have to worry about dealing with the most scrupulous and demanding editor in the history of StarCraft II (Wax never gets the credit he deserves) and I can 100% assure you that if I didn't put in the required amount of work that those articles would never have been posted. I'm fine with people thinking I am incorrect, but my standard when it comes to determining whether or not a counter argument is viable is extremely high. Not everyone would believe that harder automatically = more prestigious or important, even if there's a relationship between the two. Case in point, I would hope everyone would believe that someone who won nine world championships would pretty much automatically be the GOAT. Conversely, it's not at all clear Maru is. To be fair to Mizen, GSL was the most prestigious tournament for the first few years of sc2 existence. However that is no longer the case for close to almost a decade now. Also Maru only started to win the GSL when it lost its meaning already. I know people will dispute this point to boost Maru but that’s the truth. Maru can barely win anything outside of Korea. Being a big fish in a small pond does not = goat contender The only tournaments people care about or the hardest tournaments to win are the ones Serral are attending. Everything else just pretty much or feels like a tier B tournament. Also I believe most people couldn’t care less what anyone’s result were in the pro league. It’s already proven it was a fix league so any result is automatically voided I’m sure Mizen did lots of research into his data but stats/data are flawed and bias. It’s like people saying Lebron is a goat contender because of his “stats”, when the general consensus was will and always will be Jordan. Serral ESL Spring 2024 path: Serral(W) Nice Serral(W) herO Serral(W) Oliviera Serral(W) Maru Maru GSL S1 2024 path: Maru(W) soO Maru(W) Shin Maru(W) Classic Maru(L) herO Maru(W) Classic Maru(W) Cure Maru(W) herO Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool) It's crazy how much any player that takes maps off Serral gets overrated. Oliveira just has a weirdly good matchup vs Serral atm he is still worse than most of the Koreans. Classic has a very favored all time record and even in the last 12 months is 50-50 vs him. Same thing with Shin who actually has a dominant record vs Oliveira even when only looking at 2024 series. Cure is definitely better than Oliveira as well both head to head and vs pretty much every player in the world besides Serral.
He had one good match against Serral, he’s never beaten him in a tournament. Granted Cure isn’t doing much better with like a 2-16 match record.
I mean style does come into matchups too, player a may > player b who owns > player c, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a > c
Personally I think SHIN Rag is pretty underrated for his results over his career, probably down to his style. For whatever reason it’s ruthless strategic genius when Dark does some naughtiness, but cheesing out better players when Rag SHIN does.
Conversely I think Oliveira is a tad overrated, largely off one big tournament run, partly because he does play a thrilling style when he’s on song.
Cure has more Ro4+ performances in premier tournies since 2023 than Oliveira has had in his whole career, I’d have a real hard time placing Cure behind him.
If Maru’s still absolutely the Terran god unless one is a maniac, Cure is the clear next in line if we’re talking consistency and a rounded game if not quite hitting the heights Mary does, and Clem can hit those heights but not as frequently. Oliveira can hit huge heights too but it’s really infrequent
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Oliveira won a world championship (by beating Maru in a best of 7 high stakes TvT finals) and is the only person to make Serral bleed in a good while.
Sure he's only like that on his highs, but so was the version of Rogue that got most of a million in prize money. For making a RO4 sure Cure any day. But winning? I think Oli's got the edge in his current form.
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Serral ESL Spring 2024 path:
Serral(W) Nice
Serral(W) herO
Serral(W) Oliviera
Serral(W) Maru
Maru GSL S1 2024 path:
Maru(W) soO
Maru(W) Shin
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(L) herO
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(W) Cure
Maru(W) herO
Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path
Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
Ahh yes- having to go through more good players in a prep tournament. Clearly not as hard as going through 4 players. Makes total sense! Strong grasp on logic + perspective. Clearly no hyperbole or fanboyism going on here. Genuine discussion. Allow.
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On June 27 2024 04:14 radracer wrote:Show nested quote +
Serral ESL Spring 2024 path:
Serral(W) Nice
Serral(W) herO
Serral(W) Oliviera
Serral(W) Maru
Maru GSL S1 2024 path:
Maru(W) soO
Maru(W) Shin
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(L) herO
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(W) Cure
Maru(W) herO
Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path
Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
Ahh yes- having to go through more good players in a prep tournament. Clearly not as hard as going through 4 players. Makes total sense! Strong grasp on logic + perspective. Clearly no hyperbole or fanboyism going on here. Genuine discussion. Allow.
So beating more players is more important than the quality of players beaten?
And prep tournies are inherently harder? It depends which way you look at it.
Neither has a clear answer and there are varying opinions on each.
Sure, the top players may face better prepared lesser players, thus the difference in skill can be brought closer when they play. That is hard. But it is also harder for lesser players to beat top players in a weekender tournament and win it with less prep. Serral beating Oliveira, herO, and Maru is not an easy path for anyone, especially with less time to prep. Especially especially when 1 of them is Maru.
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On June 27 2024 04:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 04:14 radracer wrote:
Serral ESL Spring 2024 path:
Serral(W) Nice
Serral(W) herO
Serral(W) Oliviera
Serral(W) Maru
Maru GSL S1 2024 path:
Maru(W) soO
Maru(W) Shin
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(L) herO
Maru(W) Classic
Maru(W) Cure
Maru(W) herO
Pretty weak path maru had, only worthy opponent is herO on his path
Oliveria & Maru > all those Koreans (in current meta and map pool)
Ahh yes- having to go through more good players in a prep tournament. Clearly not as hard as going through 4 players. Makes total sense! Strong grasp on logic + perspective. Clearly no hyperbole or fanboyism going on here. Genuine discussion. Allow. So beating more players is more important than the quality of players beaten? And prep tournies are inherently harder? It depends which way you look at it. Neither has a clear answer and there are varying opinions on each. Sure, the top players may face better prepared lesser players, thus the difference in skill can be brought closer when they play. That is hard. But it is also harder for lesser players to beat top players in a weekender tournament and win it with less prep. Serral beating Oliveira, herO, and Maru is not an easy path for anyone, especially with less time to prep. Especially especially when 1 of them is Maru.
In which world Nice and Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Besides that yeah, the depth of the tournament (aka number of matches one has to play to get the title) is an important factor.
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EPT
