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France12762 Posts
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.
I mean, you just have to compute the odds of Maru's run on aligulac and the odds of Serral on the same website, and it'll become obvious which run was harder.
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The list above is also wrong. Serral also won against SHIN to win ESL Spring.
So basically, each Maru and Serral had to beat herO and SHIN, basically eliminating them. "Oh, but GSL is a preeeeeeeep tournament"...yes, and so is ESL Spring because literally everyone is prepping for Serral. Also, wasn't the new argument of the Korean-Force that no one is prepping and training anyway?
so it leaves the question who are stronger...soO/Cure or Nice/Oliveira. And I will say that is a pretty delicious Tie. soO and Nice are basically on the same level now - they *can* win some cool games, but usually, they won't. Cure and Oliveira are both top-level Terrans, but I would give a slight edge to Oli...a SLIGHT edge. Just based on things like Cure losing 2-3 against SHIN, while Oli beat Reynor 3-1 and takes two maps of Serral.
So the paths of Serral and Maru were mostly similiar - right? Nope, because in the end, Serral had to beat Maru, the only other God-Tier player out there at the moment. Maru did not have to win against Serral or anyone else on that level (e.g. a Reynor in super-shape). There is also the fact that GSL has a massive bonus towards the better player and that is Double-Elimination. Can be a factor, though it wasn't in this particular run.
But in the end, these comparisons are usually not helpful. It doesn't matter if Zverev wins against the Top 3 of Tennis in an ATP Masters if he can't win a Grand Slam.
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On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza 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.
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... 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.
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... 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.
Quick Response Because I feel like I was getting long winded.
1. Prize money distribution was still a joke even if they were a major contributor to the GSL, the best 30 or 40 or 50 players in the world were sharing the same split as WCS events where maybe combined there were 2 top 20 players or better? Maybe those numbers aren't totally accurate, but the point stands.
2. Those WCS events while having an equal portion of the Blizzard funds ALSO gave equal points towards outside the tournament structure events be it through invites OR WCS points. So while the 20th place Korean is facing harder players, earning the same, and getting no points. There is money given to the 20th player facing nobodies for WCS EU. And the WCS EU #1 player and #2 player were farming points to seed them into events on top of that earning them even more money.
3. None of my post was to say that Afreeca or GSL or GOM were run perfectly while I don't really think you made that claim, I just don't want that confused for anyone reading. But they certainly IMO weren't the biggest fuck ups.
4. I also indicated that Blizzard in part killed TO's. It wasn't just the franchising, it was securing their own events that ran through any attempt to hold your own. It was the attempt at killing Broodwar a scene they had no part in making. And while you said they wanted to make it worldwide, better companies putting out a better product already had done that. Sure in name some of them still exist, and blizzard wasn't the only portion of their downfall, but blizzard basically leeched off the success built by others, came in, overrode their existence, and the SC2 scene has decayed ever since the last games release. I'm not sure the CS2 and SC2 tourmanet scene can fully be compared, though I am glad valve is getting rid of the partnership program, but to be very honest, nothing is going to change. The teams who were serious about CS2 were buying the players and partnerships because that is what they wanted to do.
5. Wild-West. I can see that a tiny bit, but at launch this wasn't WAR3, this was MLG, Dreamhack, ESL, IEM GOMTV. And IIRC SC2 had PLENTY of running events that had issues with payments even while being liscensed by blizzard. The thing was there were so many events, why would you mostly ever even bother going to a unknown entity, when the next day or week there was a real event coming up. Now as for prizepool and distribution of money, this should have been solved forever ago, even an org like Blizzard who was hands off in esports should have demanded to collect all monies dedicated to a prize pool before an event. I think they can fuck right off with their liscense fee as they should only benefit as much as they put into esports. In fact they should probably have to pay events for using their game.
6. The point might not have been as linier when comparing NBA to SC2. But for argument sake I did acknowlege other basketball leagues exist, but their money is far lower, which is accurate. And while no entity holds the rights to basketball the sport, the best players, playing the best other players, get paid more in the big league. The same applies to soccer players. Meanwhile in terms of SC2, it was drastically skewed to being nearly equal everywhere, but also extrodinarily benfitial to be in WCS NA/EU due to the points and invites to other events. And nobody is saying that others shouldn't have a career, I'm just not sure you should be supported at the cost of a better scene and better talent. Honestly kind of on point to NBA/WNBA and how the NBA funds the WNBA's existence. They can live, but until they have a product or ability that is better they haven't earned more. Meanwhile the lesser scenes IMO might have earned a TINY bit less financially but had massive benefits not only in opposition faced, but in easy WCS points and event invites.
7. I don't really care about region lock what so ever. It wouldn't have mattered if the money was where it was supposed to be. Nobody is moving from Korea to NA or EU to farm that WCS event if the 1st place WCS EU was 25th place's prize pool for GSL, and they recived no points for other events. If they were content with that, so be it, good for them, but I don't think you would have even had to address it at that point.
8. You say the the goal was global and what not. And to not replace the OSL/MSl/GSL proleague etc or what not. They rode the twitch/esports boom up, built off the grass roots of those entities. They froze those same entities out and creates a somewhat diverse system. But did nothing to assist in the bubble pop, and have destroyed all of their esports leagues. And while we might have some niche diversity worldwide, we'd still have that without Blizzard's existence because of twich, and if they had never frozen out those other events or money grabbed them, there would still be a foreign scene. So now we have a pretty weak scene, heavily diluted, with far less than there was before all of this even happened. Maybe not far less, but inflation etc.
9. While I'm thinking of it honestly by now it is too bad there isn't a global entity for all of esports that holds the money for prize pools. It could be such a simple thing, but it would probably take too much coordination to get started.
10. Teams. CS2 teams fund themselves without any support outside of their own deals. COD teams do as well. SCBWs teams funded themselves. Salaries varied, demand varied. But they managed to do it on their own. I'm not sure if I do or don't put any blame on Blizzard, but also a lot of it has to do with SC2 not being a team game. Also some of it had to do with teams being weirdly competitive in signing talent and breaking the bank. As for the BW teams I think that was a weird entity/time period. Almost no salaries, proleague was massive, also even if a team itself wasn't directly profitable it was a marketing expense and perhaps that exposure alone was justification. The evolution and changing of everything not just limited to teams means there isn't always just one thing to look at and I think specifically teams and SC2 is perhaps a bit too complex for anyone to ever understand.
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On June 27 2024 05:32 Balnazza wrote:
The list above is also wrong. Serral also won against SHIN to win ESL Spring.
Sorry! True! My bad.
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In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high
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Northern Ireland24511 Posts
On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high
Once, literally once. He’s never made another premier final. Not an international weekender, not an old merged WCS either.
He’s probably hotter than some of those names minus Cure these days to be fair but his overall body of work isn’t even close to a soO or a Classic or a Cure.
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On June 27 2024 08:55 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high Once, literally once. He’s never made another premier final. Not an international weekender, not an old merged WCS either. He’s probably hotter than some of those names minus Cure these days to be fair but his overall body of work isn’t even close to a soO or a Classic or a Cure.
Okay he is certainly overhyping Oliveria for sure, but some of the guys you listed have little more than one big win and some have none, unless when I double checked I missed something.
Cure - GSL
Soo - MLG + Kato
Shin - Nothing
Classic - clearly dominates 2x GSL, IEM Schenzhen, WESG, and 2x super tournaments
Might have missed something, but largely excluded weird events and team stuff and based it off competition.
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On June 27 2024 05:57 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza 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. 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. Quick Response Because I feel like I was getting long winded. 1. Prize money distribution was still a joke even if they were a major contributor to the GSL, the best 30 or 40 or 50 players in the world were sharing the same split as WCS events where maybe combined there were 2 top 20 players or better? Maybe those numbers aren't totally accurate, but the point stands. 2. Those WCS events while having an equal portion of the Blizzard funds ALSO gave equal points towards outside the tournament structure events be it through invites OR WCS points. So while the 20th place Korean is facing harder players, earning the same, and getting no points. There is money given to the 20th player facing nobodies for WCS EU. And the WCS EU #1 player and #2 player were farming points to seed them into events on top of that earning them even more money. 3. None of my post was to say that Afreeca or GSL or GOM were run perfectly while I don't really think you made that claim, I just don't want that confused for anyone reading. But they certainly IMO weren't the biggest fuck ups. 4. I also indicated that Blizzard in part killed TO's. It wasn't just the franchising, it was securing their own events that ran through any attempt to hold your own. It was the attempt at killing Broodwar a scene they had no part in making. And while you said they wanted to make it worldwide, better companies putting out a better product already had done that. Sure in name some of them still exist, and blizzard wasn't the only portion of their downfall, but blizzard basically leeched off the success built by others, came in, overrode their existence, and the SC2 scene has decayed ever since the last games release. I'm not sure the CS2 and SC2 tourmanet scene can fully be compared, though I am glad valve is getting rid of the partnership program, but to be very honest, nothing is going to change. The teams who were serious about CS2 were buying the players and partnerships because that is what they wanted to do. 5. Wild-West. I can see that a tiny bit, but at launch this wasn't WAR3, this was MLG, Dreamhack, ESL, IEM GOMTV. And IIRC SC2 had PLENTY of running events that had issues with payments even while being liscensed by blizzard. The thing was there were so many events, why would you mostly ever even bother going to a unknown entity, when the next day or week there was a real event coming up. Now as for prizepool and distribution of money, this should have been solved forever ago, even an org like Blizzard who was hands off in esports should have demanded to collect all monies dedicated to a prize pool before an event. I think they can fuck right off with their liscense fee as they should only benefit as much as they put into esports. In fact they should probably have to pay events for using their game. 6. The point might not have been as linier when comparing NBA to SC2. But for argument sake I did acknowlege other basketball leagues exist, but their money is far lower, which is accurate. And while no entity holds the rights to basketball the sport, the best players, playing the best other players, get paid more in the big league. The same applies to soccer players. Meanwhile in terms of SC2, it was drastically skewed to being nearly equal everywhere, but also extrodinarily benfitial to be in WCS NA/EU due to the points and invites to other events. And nobody is saying that others shouldn't have a career, I'm just not sure you should be supported at the cost of a better scene and better talent. Honestly kind of on point to NBA/WNBA and how the NBA funds the WNBA's existence. They can live, but until they have a product or ability that is better they haven't earned more. Meanwhile the lesser scenes IMO might have earned a TINY bit less financially but had massive benefits not only in opposition faced, but in easy WCS points and event invites. 7. I don't really care about region lock what so ever. It wouldn't have mattered if the money was where it was supposed to be. Nobody is moving from Korea to NA or EU to farm that WCS event if the 1st place WCS EU was 25th place's prize pool for GSL, and they recived no points for other events. If they were content with that, so be it, good for them, but I don't think you would have even had to address it at that point. 8. You say the the goal was global and what not. And to not replace the OSL/MSl/GSL proleague etc or what not. They rode the twitch/esports boom up, built off the grass roots of those entities. They froze those same entities out and creates a somewhat diverse system. But did nothing to assist in the bubble pop, and have destroyed all of their esports leagues. And while we might have some niche diversity worldwide, we'd still have that without Blizzard's existence because of twich, and if they had never frozen out those other events or money grabbed them, there would still be a foreign scene. So now we have a pretty weak scene, heavily diluted, with far less than there was before all of this even happened. Maybe not far less, but inflation etc. 9. While I'm thinking of it honestly by now it is too bad there isn't a global entity for all of esports that holds the money for prize pools. It could be such a simple thing, but it would probably take too much coordination to get started. 10. Teams. CS2 teams fund themselves without any support outside of their own deals. COD teams do as well. SCBWs teams funded themselves. Salaries varied, demand varied. But they managed to do it on their own. I'm not sure if I do or don't put any blame on Blizzard, but also a lot of it has to do with SC2 not being a team game. Also some of it had to do with teams being weirdly competitive in signing talent and breaking the bank. As for the BW teams I think that was a weird entity/time period. Almost no salaries, proleague was massive, also even if a team itself wasn't directly profitable it was a marketing expense and perhaps that exposure alone was justification. The evolution and changing of everything not just limited to teams means there isn't always just one thing to look at and I think specifically teams and SC2 is perhaps a bit too complex for anyone to ever understand.
I will try to keep it quick aswell:
1. Prize money was where the viewership was and where Blizzard saw the opportunities to grow. Was that completly fair? No, but that wasn't the goal. Blizzard idea also wasn't wrong as proven by Riot: They essentially do the same, even though the Korean LCK is atleast at the top much stronger than the EU LEC. But you have a global playerbase, global opportunities to join the pro-scenes and therefore also global viewership with lots of "local heroes".
2. The entire world had to share for some time the same amount of BlizzCon-Slots than Korea. Korean Topdogs also dominated every global qualifier. We really don't need to pity the korean scene at these times...
3. I mean, eventually it was GSL/GOM/Afreeca who run it into the ground, so yeah, feels like they fucked that up big time?
4. Literally every developer did that. Riot started out with cooperations with ESL, Counterstrike was run by so many different orgs etc. And now, every developer dictates the rule of their games, the entire economy and scene. Some cooperate with others, some just do it themselves.
5. The entire thing got massively better with Blizzards envolvement. Sure, there were still hiccups (still are today), but it got SO much better for everyone involved. I also don't understand how you don't want Blizzard involved, but at the same time they "should have collected the money" for each event? That feels contradictory...
And paying them to run their game? That's not only a weird idea on a general basis, but they literally put millions of dollars into the game, essentially paying ESL and GSL to run their game?
6. As I said before: You can cut the payment of a NBA player many times for each individual national league before you reach a salary that the player can't live from anymore. How much money can you take from the GSL prizemoney before a player can't live from that?
7. "Region-lock would have been okay if the Money was where it was supposed to be" - it was. And it is honestly a weird take to think Korea just had the natural rights to be the center of SC2. What if Blizzard had actually followed your train of thought? Their own Proleague, their own Starleague...but in the US. Basically like the Overwatch League. All Koreans would have needed to come over and play? Would have that been fine for you? All the money at one point, that point just happened to be not Korea?
8. Of course Blizzard hoped that BroodWar "dies". Blizzard actively killed WC3 for SC2. Because they released their new game and hoped it would be the next big thing. So of course they wanted BroodWar gone...not that there was much BroodWar to kill outside of Korea. Same as Valve killed 1.6 and Source with Global Offensive...why would you compete with yourself?
And sure, Blizzard was riding the Twitch-Hype...multiple times btw, I sometimes feel Hearthstone invented the "modern streamer". But that alone didn't guarantee the success of the game. Blizzard invested heavily, even pre-WCS. But sure, maybe things could have gone better without WCS...could have gone a lot worse aswell. Remember that GSL got its massive prizepool also from Blizzard. Maybe without Blizzard-intervention at all, there is no GSL. They run two seasons and fail miserably, while Kespa has no interest to switch to a new game. So there is no incentive to play SC2 in Korea and the game is gone from there, with maybe players like Mvp trying to make it outside of Korea. That is, in my opinion, a completly realistic scenario.
9. And what would that change? You can't even get all big team spors into one room, why would it work with gaming? EWC Foundation will surely try, but Valve, Blizzard and especially Riot are far too stubborn for that. What we need in Esports is very hands-on developers. I know not everyone likes it, but I will always defend that Riot created the perfect esports scene for their game.
10. Teams in CS2 are not profitable. Most orgs literally bankrupt themselves, needing constant input of cash from the outside. Even ESL burns through massive amounts of cash each year.
Riot recently adressed this problem for LoL and tried to push for more sustainability, opening more revenue options for themselves and the teams. But in general, Esports is still sadly a business in constant need of investment.
It feels like you put a lot of blame on Blizzard, while simultaneously ignoring all the work they have done for the game. And while you might hate Blizzard for their investments into the foreign scene instead of spending every dim on Korea, eventually that was the right call, as the korean scene was far too small to support a potentially global success like SC2. And if anything, the korean scene might be thankful for the money sunk into GSL instead of Blizzard just saying "well, if you want to play, just move to Europe, there are the viewers anyway."
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On June 27 2024 03:26 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 02:17 JJH777 wrote: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
What's crazy about Cure is he's like the real heromarine of the Korean scene, in that he's so unbelievably consistent but almost never beats the absolute top players. Rarely, yes. But almost never.
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On June 27 2024 05:12 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 04:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: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. I mean, you just have to compute the odds of Maru's run on aligulac and the odds of Serral on the same website, and it'll become obvious which run was harder.
Maru in a Bo5 > beating Classic and SHIN a few times in Bo3s
herO = herO
Oliveira ~ Cure
I don't really care about Aligulac odds, it's just an algo. It's not obvious at all.
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On June 27 2024 10:05 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 05:57 NoobSkills wrote:On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza 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:
[quote]
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:
[quote]
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. Quick Response Because I feel like I was getting long winded. 1. Prize money distribution was still a joke even if they were a major contributor to the GSL, the best 30 or 40 or 50 players in the world were sharing the same split as WCS events where maybe combined there were 2 top 20 players or better? Maybe those numbers aren't totally accurate, but the point stands. 2. Those WCS events while having an equal portion of the Blizzard funds ALSO gave equal points towards outside the tournament structure events be it through invites OR WCS points. So while the 20th place Korean is facing harder players, earning the same, and getting no points. There is money given to the 20th player facing nobodies for WCS EU. And the WCS EU #1 player and #2 player were farming points to seed them into events on top of that earning them even more money. 3. None of my post was to say that Afreeca or GSL or GOM were run perfectly while I don't really think you made that claim, I just don't want that confused for anyone reading. But they certainly IMO weren't the biggest fuck ups. 4. I also indicated that Blizzard in part killed TO's. It wasn't just the franchising, it was securing their own events that ran through any attempt to hold your own. It was the attempt at killing Broodwar a scene they had no part in making. And while you said they wanted to make it worldwide, better companies putting out a better product already had done that. Sure in name some of them still exist, and blizzard wasn't the only portion of their downfall, but blizzard basically leeched off the success built by others, came in, overrode their existence, and the SC2 scene has decayed ever since the last games release. I'm not sure the CS2 and SC2 tourmanet scene can fully be compared, though I am glad valve is getting rid of the partnership program, but to be very honest, nothing is going to change. The teams who were serious about CS2 were buying the players and partnerships because that is what they wanted to do. 5. Wild-West. I can see that a tiny bit, but at launch this wasn't WAR3, this was MLG, Dreamhack, ESL, IEM GOMTV. And IIRC SC2 had PLENTY of running events that had issues with payments even while being liscensed by blizzard. The thing was there were so many events, why would you mostly ever even bother going to a unknown entity, when the next day or week there was a real event coming up. Now as for prizepool and distribution of money, this should have been solved forever ago, even an org like Blizzard who was hands off in esports should have demanded to collect all monies dedicated to a prize pool before an event. I think they can fuck right off with their liscense fee as they should only benefit as much as they put into esports. In fact they should probably have to pay events for using their game. 6. The point might not have been as linier when comparing NBA to SC2. But for argument sake I did acknowlege other basketball leagues exist, but their money is far lower, which is accurate. And while no entity holds the rights to basketball the sport, the best players, playing the best other players, get paid more in the big league. The same applies to soccer players. Meanwhile in terms of SC2, it was drastically skewed to being nearly equal everywhere, but also extrodinarily benfitial to be in WCS NA/EU due to the points and invites to other events. And nobody is saying that others shouldn't have a career, I'm just not sure you should be supported at the cost of a better scene and better talent. Honestly kind of on point to NBA/WNBA and how the NBA funds the WNBA's existence. They can live, but until they have a product or ability that is better they haven't earned more. Meanwhile the lesser scenes IMO might have earned a TINY bit less financially but had massive benefits not only in opposition faced, but in easy WCS points and event invites. 7. I don't really care about region lock what so ever. It wouldn't have mattered if the money was where it was supposed to be. Nobody is moving from Korea to NA or EU to farm that WCS event if the 1st place WCS EU was 25th place's prize pool for GSL, and they recived no points for other events. If they were content with that, so be it, good for them, but I don't think you would have even had to address it at that point. 8. You say the the goal was global and what not. And to not replace the OSL/MSl/GSL proleague etc or what not. They rode the twitch/esports boom up, built off the grass roots of those entities. They froze those same entities out and creates a somewhat diverse system. But did nothing to assist in the bubble pop, and have destroyed all of their esports leagues. And while we might have some niche diversity worldwide, we'd still have that without Blizzard's existence because of twich, and if they had never frozen out those other events or money grabbed them, there would still be a foreign scene. So now we have a pretty weak scene, heavily diluted, with far less than there was before all of this even happened. Maybe not far less, but inflation etc. 9. While I'm thinking of it honestly by now it is too bad there isn't a global entity for all of esports that holds the money for prize pools. It could be such a simple thing, but it would probably take too much coordination to get started. 10. Teams. CS2 teams fund themselves without any support outside of their own deals. COD teams do as well. SCBWs teams funded themselves. Salaries varied, demand varied. But they managed to do it on their own. I'm not sure if I do or don't put any blame on Blizzard, but also a lot of it has to do with SC2 not being a team game. Also some of it had to do with teams being weirdly competitive in signing talent and breaking the bank. As for the BW teams I think that was a weird entity/time period. Almost no salaries, proleague was massive, also even if a team itself wasn't directly profitable it was a marketing expense and perhaps that exposure alone was justification. The evolution and changing of everything not just limited to teams means there isn't always just one thing to look at and I think specifically teams and SC2 is perhaps a bit too complex for anyone to ever understand. I will try to keep it quick aswell: 1. Prize money was where the viewership was and where Blizzard saw the opportunities to grow. Was that completly fair? No, but that wasn't the goal. Blizzard idea also wasn't wrong as proven by Riot: They essentially do the same, even though the Korean LCK is atleast at the top much stronger than the EU LEC. But you have a global playerbase, global opportunities to join the pro-scenes and therefore also global viewership with lots of "local heroes". 2. The entire world had to share for some time the same amount of BlizzCon-Slots than Korea. Korean Topdogs also dominated every global qualifier. We really don't need to pity the korean scene at these times... 3. I mean, eventually it was GSL/GOM/Afreeca who run it into the ground, so yeah, feels like they fucked that up big time? 4. Literally every developer did that. Riot started out with cooperations with ESL, Counterstrike was run by so many different orgs etc. And now, every developer dictates the rule of their games, the entire economy and scene. Some cooperate with others, some just do it themselves. 5. The entire thing got massively better with Blizzards envolvement. Sure, there were still hiccups (still are today), but it got SO much better for everyone involved. I also don't understand how you don't want Blizzard involved, but at the same time they "should have collected the money" for each event? That feels contradictory... And paying them to run their game? That's not only a weird idea on a general basis, but they literally put millions of dollars into the game, essentially paying ESL and GSL to run their game? 6. As I said before: You can cut the payment of a NBA player many times for each individual national league before you reach a salary that the player can't live from anymore. How much money can you take from the GSL prizemoney before a player can't live from that? 7. "Region-lock would have been okay if the Money was where it was supposed to be" - it was. And it is honestly a weird take to think Korea just had the natural rights to be the center of SC2. What if Blizzard had actually followed your train of thought? Their own Proleague, their own Starleague...but in the US. Basically like the Overwatch League. All Koreans would have needed to come over and play? Would have that been fine for you? All the money at one point, that point just happened to be not Korea? 8. Of course Blizzard hoped that BroodWar "dies". Blizzard actively killed WC3 for SC2. Because they released their new game and hoped it would be the next big thing. So of course they wanted BroodWar gone...not that there was much BroodWar to kill outside of Korea. Same as Valve killed 1.6 and Source with Global Offensive...why would you compete with yourself? And sure, Blizzard was riding the Twitch-Hype...multiple times btw, I sometimes feel Hearthstone invented the "modern streamer". But that alone didn't guarantee the success of the game. Blizzard invested heavily, even pre-WCS. But sure, maybe things could have gone better without WCS...could have gone a lot worse aswell. Remember that GSL got its massive prizepool also from Blizzard. Maybe without Blizzard-intervention at all, there is no GSL. They run two seasons and fail miserably, while Kespa has no interest to switch to a new game. So there is no incentive to play SC2 in Korea and the game is gone from there, with maybe players like Mvp trying to make it outside of Korea. That is, in my opinion, a completly realistic scenario. 9. And what would that change? You can't even get all big team spors into one room, why would it work with gaming? EWC Foundation will surely try, but Valve, Blizzard and especially Riot are far too stubborn for that. What we need in Esports is very hands-on developers. I know not everyone likes it, but I will always defend that Riot created the perfect esports scene for their game. 10. Teams in CS2 are not profitable. Most orgs literally bankrupt themselves, needing constant input of cash from the outside. Even ESL burns through massive amounts of cash each year. Riot recently adressed this problem for LoL and tried to push for more sustainability, opening more revenue options for themselves and the teams. But in general, Esports is still sadly a business in constant need of investment. It feels like you put a lot of blame on Blizzard, while simultaneously ignoring all the work they have done for the game. And while you might hate Blizzard for their investments into the foreign scene instead of spending every dim on Korea, eventually that was the right call, as the korean scene was far too small to support a potentially global success like SC2. And if anything, the korean scene might be thankful for the money sunk into GSL instead of Blizzard just saying "well, if you want to play, just move to Europe, there are the viewers anyway."
1. Was it really based off viewership? I mean we don't even have GOM numbers right? As for growing I get that, but a minimal investment in those scenes keeping them operating and viable was what was needed. I wasn't suggesting eliminating all funding. I just don't think that #1 EU WCS should receive anywhere near the support as #1 GSL winner. See and that would still be unfair, but perfectly fine, and I mean unfair because EU I'm not sure deserved even that much. As for the "growing" they were trying to do, honestly the WCS effort I don't think had much to do with it, people were hungry regardless for anything SC2 related. Just look at the weekend events. I do get trying to be universal, in some regard, but not at the cost of better teams/players getting far less than people simply because they live in an easier location to farm.
2. As for the entire world sharing the same slots to Blizzcon I still think that was a shame too and not for the foreign side of things, they got far more all things considered. At the end of the day if you're hosting a competition I see room for having avenues all over, but not that extreme. You should have the best of the best HEAVILY at any event especially if it is invite only. The only question to ask is were there better players sitting at home than the ones that got a free pass while playing in a weaker scene and collecting free prize money. The answer to that is for sure yes. Maybe a ranking system should have been put in place to determine a bit of it.
3. Not entirely sure about who ran what into the ground. I know that blizzard's limitations weren't a joke. But GSL/GOM/Afreeca weren't the leaders of events in Korea until Blizzard started favoring them. Then with the killing of SCBW at the time it eliminated their viability. And with the general interest dwindling down and them causing unreparable harm to the BW scene what was really left? Nobody else was there to support the otherside, meanwhile if OSL/MSL/Proleague/BW still existed there might be some more general interest in SC2 to this day.
4. You are right a ton of people took over to make things more organized. Meanwhile those companies are directly funding the events, have pay requirements for players, and haven't backed out of their scenes. Blizzard came to leech off the success of them, take over, charge them money, killed off competition, and then ran away. There is a big difference IMO between the two. And SC2 isn't the only Acti-Blizz title that is suffering massively due to their own stupidity.
5. I don't want Blizzard involved with managing events or leeching off them. I don't think that the only fee to running an event is that Blizzard holds the prize pool is a massive ask. Though again later on I talked about a separate entity. Either way would have been fine. But Blizzard in control of anything esports related was bound to go this way.
6. I don't know is every single Code S player at the time able to fund their existence from their full time job, while hobbyists can collect that same cash in other supported events globally? Should I be able to walk onto a pickup game at the park and earn the same money as an EU league player? There are retirements and game switchers and streamers who backed off or sacraficed their competitive ability due to finances who were better than those who were getting the bag in the other circuts.
7. CS best players are EU, main events and organization surround EU. SCBW best players are KOR main events in KOR. COD best players NA (usually) main events in NA. SC2 best players in KOR mainly, but hey let's be the weird one and make this game super global. And it isn't about some sort of natual right they had the players and the infastructure already there.
8. Valve didn't kill 1.5 with source. Nor either with CSGO as events were still allowed to run on the previous titles. Eventually when GO cleaned up tournaments/money/players all volunatarily moved to GO. This of course didn't happen with CS2 as they did kill off GO in that you simply cannot play it. And one would argue that the transition made to GO went more smoothly than to CS2 because nobody was rushed and it gave time for them to update the game. As to competition for the starcraft series, why remaster the game you tried to kill a few years previously lol? And who says SC2 wouldn't have been better even with BW around? We won't know because blizzard again had to step in.
Sure you are right maybe there isn't a GSL without Blizzard, perhaps there is OSL/MSL/Starleage for SC2. We don't know b/c Blizzard killed those too. Which killed the remaining teams which were trying to stay alive. All in order to ride the hype of work everyone else put in, leech off that success, just to bail out, leaving a fairly weak scene. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it was, but still a very dead worldwide game now. Dead probably isn't the right term, but completely decimated perhaps? Just like they did with BW and OWL and CDL.
See because those entities all existed for years before Blizzard even thought about esports without any Blizzard funding what so ever.
9. That someone would have the prize pool ahead of time and less schenanigans. They could also state before an event happens if they have the money or not. So you could still choose to go, but I bet a lot of people would skip it. You're talking about big companies when you're talking about valve/blizzard/riot. I'm not talking about their funds because they pay and they could easiyl be sued. I'm talking about if JoeShmo SC2 tournament wants to advertise a 2000 prize pool tournament that entity would hold that cash. It didn't HAVE to be a 4th party (?) it could have just as well been Blizzard who said you must have the prize pool up front or valve or whoever. But then at least a known entity is on the hook for it.
10. Profitibility in CS2 depends on a wide factor. There are certainly some profitable ones. Though you are right some TOs and Orgs are betting on the future or dilution to make ends meet. But those are rolling dice that they chose to pick up. Meanwhile there are plenty of successful cases, honestly the best being the Korean market as their funding was essentially a marketing campaign year after year. So teams weren't diluting themselves or losing control or gambling, so much as they were a tool for companies to use to advertise, and the product was attached to SC players. Outside of that I'm not sure anyone did as great, but so many fell into the bubble trap.
I do put most of all of the blame on Blizzard for sure. I'm not neglecting some efforts were made, but it was nothing crazy, nor impressive, and was leeching in nature. Their entire esports portfolio since their involvement has largely collapsed while others are maintaining just fine. LOL/Valorant? Dota2/CS? And they didn't have to kill off anything to fake their success. So you can't blame the collapse solely on the bubble as they all existed in that same bubble. It feels like you think that Blizzard did something that others weren't already doing and had good intentions, when in reality they just wanted to leech money off of everyone, which is why Acti Blizzard titles are struggling or dying or dead while the rest are doing fine.
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Northern Ireland24511 Posts
On June 27 2024 09:23 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 08:55 WombaT wrote:On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high Once, literally once. He’s never made another premier final. Not an international weekender, not an old merged WCS either. He’s probably hotter than some of those names minus Cure these days to be fair but his overall body of work isn’t even close to a soO or a Classic or a Cure. Okay he is certainly overhyping Oliveria for sure, but some of the guys you listed have little more than one big win and some have none, unless when I double checked I missed something. Cure - GSL Soo - MLG + Kato Shin - Nothing Classic - clearly dominates 2x GSL, IEM Schenzhen, WESG, and 2x super tournaments Might have missed something, but largely excluded weird events and team stuff and based it off competition.
Oliveira has made one Premier final in his career, granted he won it and won big, he’s only made 2 other premier Ro4s (outside of the old merged WCS, where he made a couple of Ro4s too)
It’s not nothing obviously!
Personally I actually think it’s cool to have if not a ‘one hit’ wonder, something kinda like that as a big fun hyped storyline, and he’s a great talent no doubt.
But as a consistent presence at the business end of the higher quality competitions he’s closer to a Heromarine or a Special than he is to some of these blokes.
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On June 27 2024 11:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 09:23 NoobSkills wrote:On June 27 2024 08:55 WombaT wrote:On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high Once, literally once. He’s never made another premier final. Not an international weekender, not an old merged WCS either. He’s probably hotter than some of those names minus Cure these days to be fair but his overall body of work isn’t even close to a soO or a Classic or a Cure. Okay he is certainly overhyping Oliveria for sure, but some of the guys you listed have little more than one big win and some have none, unless when I double checked I missed something. Cure - GSL Soo - MLG + Kato Shin - Nothing Classic - clearly dominates 2x GSL, IEM Schenzhen, WESG, and 2x super tournaments Might have missed something, but largely excluded weird events and team stuff and based it off competition. Oliveira has made one Premier final in his career, granted he won it and won big, he’s only made 2 other premier Ro4s (outside of the old merged WCS, where he made a couple of Ro4s too) It’s not nothing obviously! Personally I actually think it’s cool to have if not a ‘one hit’ wonder, something kinda like that as a big fun hyped storyline, and he’s a great talent no doubt. But as a consistent presence at the business end of the higher quality competitions he’s closer to a Heromarine or a Special than he is to some of these blokes.
I agree with you mostly, was simply pointing out that cure and soo and shin don't have massive accolades to their name either. Now if you're counting Ro4's and Ro8's and their totals the math might change, but they also have some years on him too iirc.
Also considering that his Kato was in 2023, I'm not sure he is a confirmed 1 hit, but only time will tell. I was merely pointing out that some of the names you listed while consistent and continual attempts have happened don't have the trophy cabinet that instantly makes them leagues ahead. Reaching a RO4 or finals or RO8 at these big events is a great achievement, but wins are wins, stopping short of that IMO doesn't matter if you're 2nd or 8th or 16th. A bad bracket or a lucky bracket can determine that.
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On June 27 2024 11:02 NoobSkills wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 10:05 Balnazza wrote:On June 27 2024 05:57 NoobSkills wrote:On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza 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:
[quote]
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:
[quote]
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. Quick Response Because I feel like I was getting long winded. 1. Prize money distribution was still a joke even if they were a major contributor to the GSL, the best 30 or 40 or 50 players in the world were sharing the same split as WCS events where maybe combined there were 2 top 20 players or better? Maybe those numbers aren't totally accurate, but the point stands. 2. Those WCS events while having an equal portion of the Blizzard funds ALSO gave equal points towards outside the tournament structure events be it through invites OR WCS points. So while the 20th place Korean is facing harder players, earning the same, and getting no points. There is money given to the 20th player facing nobodies for WCS EU. And the WCS EU #1 player and #2 player were farming points to seed them into events on top of that earning them even more money. 3. None of my post was to say that Afreeca or GSL or GOM were run perfectly while I don't really think you made that claim, I just don't want that confused for anyone reading. But they certainly IMO weren't the biggest fuck ups. 4. I also indicated that Blizzard in part killed TO's. It wasn't just the franchising, it was securing their own events that ran through any attempt to hold your own. It was the attempt at killing Broodwar a scene they had no part in making. And while you said they wanted to make it worldwide, better companies putting out a better product already had done that. Sure in name some of them still exist, and blizzard wasn't the only portion of their downfall, but blizzard basically leeched off the success built by others, came in, overrode their existence, and the SC2 scene has decayed ever since the last games release. I'm not sure the CS2 and SC2 tourmanet scene can fully be compared, though I am glad valve is getting rid of the partnership program, but to be very honest, nothing is going to change. The teams who were serious about CS2 were buying the players and partnerships because that is what they wanted to do. 5. Wild-West. I can see that a tiny bit, but at launch this wasn't WAR3, this was MLG, Dreamhack, ESL, IEM GOMTV. And IIRC SC2 had PLENTY of running events that had issues with payments even while being liscensed by blizzard. The thing was there were so many events, why would you mostly ever even bother going to a unknown entity, when the next day or week there was a real event coming up. Now as for prizepool and distribution of money, this should have been solved forever ago, even an org like Blizzard who was hands off in esports should have demanded to collect all monies dedicated to a prize pool before an event. I think they can fuck right off with their liscense fee as they should only benefit as much as they put into esports. In fact they should probably have to pay events for using their game. 6. The point might not have been as linier when comparing NBA to SC2. But for argument sake I did acknowlege other basketball leagues exist, but their money is far lower, which is accurate. And while no entity holds the rights to basketball the sport, the best players, playing the best other players, get paid more in the big league. The same applies to soccer players. Meanwhile in terms of SC2, it was drastically skewed to being nearly equal everywhere, but also extrodinarily benfitial to be in WCS NA/EU due to the points and invites to other events. And nobody is saying that others shouldn't have a career, I'm just not sure you should be supported at the cost of a better scene and better talent. Honestly kind of on point to NBA/WNBA and how the NBA funds the WNBA's existence. They can live, but until they have a product or ability that is better they haven't earned more. Meanwhile the lesser scenes IMO might have earned a TINY bit less financially but had massive benefits not only in opposition faced, but in easy WCS points and event invites. 7. I don't really care about region lock what so ever. It wouldn't have mattered if the money was where it was supposed to be. Nobody is moving from Korea to NA or EU to farm that WCS event if the 1st place WCS EU was 25th place's prize pool for GSL, and they recived no points for other events. If they were content with that, so be it, good for them, but I don't think you would have even had to address it at that point. 8. You say the the goal was global and what not. And to not replace the OSL/MSl/GSL proleague etc or what not. They rode the twitch/esports boom up, built off the grass roots of those entities. They froze those same entities out and creates a somewhat diverse system. But did nothing to assist in the bubble pop, and have destroyed all of their esports leagues. And while we might have some niche diversity worldwide, we'd still have that without Blizzard's existence because of twich, and if they had never frozen out those other events or money grabbed them, there would still be a foreign scene. So now we have a pretty weak scene, heavily diluted, with far less than there was before all of this even happened. Maybe not far less, but inflation etc. 9. While I'm thinking of it honestly by now it is too bad there isn't a global entity for all of esports that holds the money for prize pools. It could be such a simple thing, but it would probably take too much coordination to get started. 10. Teams. CS2 teams fund themselves without any support outside of their own deals. COD teams do as well. SCBWs teams funded themselves. Salaries varied, demand varied. But they managed to do it on their own. I'm not sure if I do or don't put any blame on Blizzard, but also a lot of it has to do with SC2 not being a team game. Also some of it had to do with teams being weirdly competitive in signing talent and breaking the bank. As for the BW teams I think that was a weird entity/time period. Almost no salaries, proleague was massive, also even if a team itself wasn't directly profitable it was a marketing expense and perhaps that exposure alone was justification. The evolution and changing of everything not just limited to teams means there isn't always just one thing to look at and I think specifically teams and SC2 is perhaps a bit too complex for anyone to ever understand. I will try to keep it quick aswell: 1. Prize money was where the viewership was and where Blizzard saw the opportunities to grow. Was that completly fair? No, but that wasn't the goal. Blizzard idea also wasn't wrong as proven by Riot: They essentially do the same, even though the Korean LCK is atleast at the top much stronger than the EU LEC. But you have a global playerbase, global opportunities to join the pro-scenes and therefore also global viewership with lots of "local heroes". 2. The entire world had to share for some time the same amount of BlizzCon-Slots than Korea. Korean Topdogs also dominated every global qualifier. We really don't need to pity the korean scene at these times... 3. I mean, eventually it was GSL/GOM/Afreeca who run it into the ground, so yeah, feels like they fucked that up big time? 4. Literally every developer did that. Riot started out with cooperations with ESL, Counterstrike was run by so many different orgs etc. And now, every developer dictates the rule of their games, the entire economy and scene. Some cooperate with others, some just do it themselves. 5. The entire thing got massively better with Blizzards envolvement. Sure, there were still hiccups (still are today), but it got SO much better for everyone involved. I also don't understand how you don't want Blizzard involved, but at the same time they "should have collected the money" for each event? That feels contradictory... And paying them to run their game? That's not only a weird idea on a general basis, but they literally put millions of dollars into the game, essentially paying ESL and GSL to run their game? 6. As I said before: You can cut the payment of a NBA player many times for each individual national league before you reach a salary that the player can't live from anymore. How much money can you take from the GSL prizemoney before a player can't live from that? 7. "Region-lock would have been okay if the Money was where it was supposed to be" - it was. And it is honestly a weird take to think Korea just had the natural rights to be the center of SC2. What if Blizzard had actually followed your train of thought? Their own Proleague, their own Starleague...but in the US. Basically like the Overwatch League. All Koreans would have needed to come over and play? Would have that been fine for you? All the money at one point, that point just happened to be not Korea? 8. Of course Blizzard hoped that BroodWar "dies". Blizzard actively killed WC3 for SC2. Because they released their new game and hoped it would be the next big thing. So of course they wanted BroodWar gone...not that there was much BroodWar to kill outside of Korea. Same as Valve killed 1.6 and Source with Global Offensive...why would you compete with yourself? And sure, Blizzard was riding the Twitch-Hype...multiple times btw, I sometimes feel Hearthstone invented the "modern streamer". But that alone didn't guarantee the success of the game. Blizzard invested heavily, even pre-WCS. But sure, maybe things could have gone better without WCS...could have gone a lot worse aswell. Remember that GSL got its massive prizepool also from Blizzard. Maybe without Blizzard-intervention at all, there is no GSL. They run two seasons and fail miserably, while Kespa has no interest to switch to a new game. So there is no incentive to play SC2 in Korea and the game is gone from there, with maybe players like Mvp trying to make it outside of Korea. That is, in my opinion, a completly realistic scenario. 9. And what would that change? You can't even get all big team spors into one room, why would it work with gaming? EWC Foundation will surely try, but Valve, Blizzard and especially Riot are far too stubborn for that. What we need in Esports is very hands-on developers. I know not everyone likes it, but I will always defend that Riot created the perfect esports scene for their game. 10. Teams in CS2 are not profitable. Most orgs literally bankrupt themselves, needing constant input of cash from the outside. Even ESL burns through massive amounts of cash each year. Riot recently adressed this problem for LoL and tried to push for more sustainability, opening more revenue options for themselves and the teams. But in general, Esports is still sadly a business in constant need of investment. It feels like you put a lot of blame on Blizzard, while simultaneously ignoring all the work they have done for the game. And while you might hate Blizzard for their investments into the foreign scene instead of spending every dim on Korea, eventually that was the right call, as the korean scene was far too small to support a potentially global success like SC2. And if anything, the korean scene might be thankful for the money sunk into GSL instead of Blizzard just saying "well, if you want to play, just move to Europe, there are the viewers anyway." 1. Was it really based off viewership? I mean we don't even have GOM numbers right? As for growing I get that, but a minimal investment in those scenes keeping them operating and viable was what was needed. I wasn't suggesting eliminating all funding. I just don't think that #1 EU WCS should receive anywhere near the support as #1 GSL winner. See and that would still be unfair, but perfectly fine, and I mean unfair because EU I'm not sure deserved even that much. As for the "growing" they were trying to do, honestly the WCS effort I don't think had much to do with it, people were hungry regardless for anything SC2 related. Just look at the weekend events. I do get trying to be universal, in some regard, but not at the cost of better teams/players getting far less than people simply because they live in an easier location to farm. 2. As for the entire world sharing the same slots to Blizzcon I still think that was a shame too and not for the foreign side of things, they got far more all things considered. At the end of the day if you're hosting a competition I see room for having avenues all over, but not that extreme. You should have the best of the best HEAVILY at any event especially if it is invite only. The only question to ask is were there better players sitting at home than the ones that got a free pass while playing in a weaker scene and collecting free prize money. The answer to that is for sure yes. Maybe a ranking system should have been put in place to determine a bit of it. 3. Not entirely sure about who ran what into the ground. I know that blizzard's limitations weren't a joke. But GSL/GOM/Afreeca weren't the leaders of events in Korea until Blizzard started favoring them. Then with the killing of SCBW at the time it eliminated their viability. And with the general interest dwindling down and them causing unreparable harm to the BW scene what was really left? Nobody else was there to support the otherside, meanwhile if OSL/MSL/Proleague/BW still existed there might be some more general interest in SC2 to this day. 4. You are right a ton of people took over to make things more organized. Meanwhile those companies are directly funding the events, have pay requirements for players, and haven't backed out of their scenes. Blizzard came to leech off the success of them, take over, charge them money, killed off competition, and then ran away. There is a big difference IMO between the two. And SC2 isn't the only Acti-Blizz title that is suffering massively due to their own stupidity. 5. I don't want Blizzard involved with managing events or leeching off them. I don't think that the only fee to running an event is that Blizzard holds the prize pool is a massive ask. Though again later on I talked about a separate entity. Either way would have been fine. But Blizzard in control of anything esports related was bound to go this way. 6. I don't know is every single Code S player at the time able to fund their existence from their full time job, while hobbyists can collect that same cash in other supported events globally? Should I be able to walk onto a pickup game at the park and earn the same money as an EU league player? There are retirements and game switchers and streamers who backed off or sacraficed their competitive ability due to finances who were better than those who were getting the bag in the other circuts. 7. CS best players are EU, main events and organization surround EU. SCBW best players are KOR main events in KOR. COD best players NA (usually) main events in NA. SC2 best players in KOR mainly, but hey let's be the weird one and make this game super global. And it isn't about some sort of natual right they had the players and the infastructure already there. 8. Valve didn't kill 1.5 with source. Nor either with CSGO as events were still allowed to run on the previous titles. Eventually when GO cleaned up tournaments/money/players all volunatarily moved to GO. This of course didn't happen with CS2 as they did kill off GO in that you simply cannot play it. And one would argue that the transition made to GO went more smoothly than to CS2 because nobody was rushed and it gave time for them to update the game. As to competition for the starcraft series, why remaster the game you tried to kill a few years previously lol? And who says SC2 wouldn't have been better even with BW around? We won't know because blizzard again had to step in. Sure you are right maybe there isn't a GSL without Blizzard, perhaps there is OSL/MSL/Starleage for SC2. We don't know b/c Blizzard killed those too. Which killed the remaining teams which were trying to stay alive. All in order to ride the hype of work everyone else put in, leech off that success, just to bail out, leaving a fairly weak scene. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it was, but still a very dead worldwide game now. Dead probably isn't the right term, but completely decimated perhaps? Just like they did with BW and OWL and CDL. See because those entities all existed for years before Blizzard even thought about esports without any Blizzard funding what so ever. 9. That someone would have the prize pool ahead of time and less schenanigans. They could also state before an event happens if they have the money or not. So you could still choose to go, but I bet a lot of people would skip it. You're talking about big companies when you're talking about valve/blizzard/riot. I'm not talking about their funds because they pay and they could easiyl be sued. I'm talking about if JoeShmo SC2 tournament wants to advertise a 2000 prize pool tournament that entity would hold that cash. It didn't HAVE to be a 4th party (?) it could have just as well been Blizzard who said you must have the prize pool up front or valve or whoever. But then at least a known entity is on the hook for it. 10. Profitibility in CS2 depends on a wide factor. There are certainly some profitable ones. Though you are right some TOs and Orgs are betting on the future or dilution to make ends meet. But those are rolling dice that they chose to pick up. Meanwhile there are plenty of successful cases, honestly the best being the Korean market as their funding was essentially a marketing campaign year after year. So teams weren't diluting themselves or losing control or gambling, so much as they were a tool for companies to use to advertise, and the product was attached to SC players. Outside of that I'm not sure anyone did as great, but so many fell into the bubble trap. I do put most of all of the blame on Blizzard for sure. I'm not neglecting some efforts were made, but it was nothing crazy, nor impressive, and was leeching in nature. Their entire esports portfolio since their involvement has largely collapsed while others are maintaining just fine. LOL/Valorant? Dota2/CS? And they didn't have to kill off anything to fake their success. So you can't blame the collapse solely on the bubble as they all existed in that same bubble. It feels like you think that Blizzard did something that others weren't already doing and had good intentions, when in reality they just wanted to leech money off of everyone, which is why Acti Blizzard titles are struggling or dying or dead while the rest are doing fine.
Won't answer to each point, since essentially they start to meddle a bit.
1. Prizepool distribution
We won't find a common point here. To get your point across, you would have needed to half if not more the prizepool of EU and AM, which essentially stops it being worth for a larger playerbase. Which would in return just led to the BW-Korea-Circlejerk that barely anyone cared about globally.
2. Blizzard "run away"
Blizzard paid SC2 Esports for ten+ years. TEN YEARS. And to a point when SC2 long stopped being profitable. Blizzard run away from Heroes of the Storm, that is true. But SC2? No, just no. Calling that "they leeched off and then left" is false and honestly disrespectful.
3. Blizzard and BroodWar
Blizzard didn't kill OSL/MSL/OPL. They weren't forbidden to run. The entire conflicht was about who is in charge of Starcraft. Kespa wanted to keep their position, so they refused SC2 in the beginning. But eventually, the change to the new game had to be made. It's not like BroodWar was doing amazingly well either. In the two seasons prior to the switch to SC2, Proleague lost four teams. And it is not like Proleague suddenly returned with SC:R.
Blizzard stopped caring for BroodWar long ago, then they stopped caring for WC3, just putting all efforts into SC2. And only after SC2 stopped being a relevant project SC:R got done. And Blizzard even paid for that game with some tournaments, including their own Starleague in Korea.
Again, I'm really not sure what you wanted here? Apparently that Blizzard goes to Kespa/OGN, gives them all the money in the world and says "don't worry, the global playerbase will surely catch up and soon play in Proleague aswell"? Why would they do that if the goal is to create a global enviroment? OGN didn't care at all about the global playerbase, why would they? They are literally Korea-only.
4. Korea should be the focus.
You are mistaken if you think tournaments are just hosted were the highest level of skill is. CS2 is spread out all across the world, the next Major will be in Shanghai, even though literally no Chinese team (and barely any Asian team) will have a shot at the title. Europe usually gets the most qualifying spots, but the entire game tries to present itself globally.
Riot is present in all regions, but yet again, Worlds for example wander between regions. The Overwatch League was dominated by korean players, but the League itself got based in the US. With CoD you are correct, but there is the snatch: CoD is mostly big in the US, in terms of Esports it isn't particularly interesting in Europe. So it doesn't make any sense to host games here.
You host your tournament where it makes the most economical sense. And for SC2, Korea isn't particularly a hotspot. In the end, it is easier to get ten korean players to a hyping arena in Dallas than the Dallas-crowd to Seoul.
You can see that in traditional sports aswell. For example, the NFL is currently trying to expand to Europe, especially Germany. Hosting multiple games per season in german football/soccer stadiums. Are they doing that because the NFL wants to harness the great potential of germanys American Football players? No, but in the last ten years, the Super Bowl has become kind of a trend here and people get more interested in American Football...so the NFL tries to capitalize on that.
And while it is easier said than done...that would have probably been something the GSL and Proleague needed to be doing. Have one of three GSL finals per year in America and Europe (I think they one-time had GSL Finals at BlizzCon or something like that?).
5. CS2 teams are profitable
They are in fact not. They all are costing off sticker-money. The T3 scene is collapsing with ESL pulling out of national events and now with Valves changes towards the Major qualification, even more teams are disbanding. One of the best teams in the world (FaZe) just recently had to be sold, since the entire org was down in the shits and needed fresh cash.
BW Proleague worked because, as you said, it was marketing towards the home-market. But how many of the Proleague-sponsors are even operating outside of Korea? I can only really think of Samsung. It was cool and amazing, but it was also only working in a niche. A niche you can't really build your new big game around.
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On June 27 2024 12:48 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 11:02 NoobSkills wrote:On June 27 2024 10:05 Balnazza wrote:On June 27 2024 05:57 NoobSkills wrote:On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza 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:
[quote]
"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:
[quote]
"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. Quick Response Because I feel like I was getting long winded. 1. Prize money distribution was still a joke even if they were a major contributor to the GSL, the best 30 or 40 or 50 players in the world were sharing the same split as WCS events where maybe combined there were 2 top 20 players or better? Maybe those numbers aren't totally accurate, but the point stands. 2. Those WCS events while having an equal portion of the Blizzard funds ALSO gave equal points towards outside the tournament structure events be it through invites OR WCS points. So while the 20th place Korean is facing harder players, earning the same, and getting no points. There is money given to the 20th player facing nobodies for WCS EU. And the WCS EU #1 player and #2 player were farming points to seed them into events on top of that earning them even more money. 3. None of my post was to say that Afreeca or GSL or GOM were run perfectly while I don't really think you made that claim, I just don't want that confused for anyone reading. But they certainly IMO weren't the biggest fuck ups. 4. I also indicated that Blizzard in part killed TO's. It wasn't just the franchising, it was securing their own events that ran through any attempt to hold your own. It was the attempt at killing Broodwar a scene they had no part in making. And while you said they wanted to make it worldwide, better companies putting out a better product already had done that. Sure in name some of them still exist, and blizzard wasn't the only portion of their downfall, but blizzard basically leeched off the success built by others, came in, overrode their existence, and the SC2 scene has decayed ever since the last games release. I'm not sure the CS2 and SC2 tourmanet scene can fully be compared, though I am glad valve is getting rid of the partnership program, but to be very honest, nothing is going to change. The teams who were serious about CS2 were buying the players and partnerships because that is what they wanted to do. 5. Wild-West. I can see that a tiny bit, but at launch this wasn't WAR3, this was MLG, Dreamhack, ESL, IEM GOMTV. And IIRC SC2 had PLENTY of running events that had issues with payments even while being liscensed by blizzard. The thing was there were so many events, why would you mostly ever even bother going to a unknown entity, when the next day or week there was a real event coming up. Now as for prizepool and distribution of money, this should have been solved forever ago, even an org like Blizzard who was hands off in esports should have demanded to collect all monies dedicated to a prize pool before an event. I think they can fuck right off with their liscense fee as they should only benefit as much as they put into esports. In fact they should probably have to pay events for using their game. 6. The point might not have been as linier when comparing NBA to SC2. But for argument sake I did acknowlege other basketball leagues exist, but their money is far lower, which is accurate. And while no entity holds the rights to basketball the sport, the best players, playing the best other players, get paid more in the big league. The same applies to soccer players. Meanwhile in terms of SC2, it was drastically skewed to being nearly equal everywhere, but also extrodinarily benfitial to be in WCS NA/EU due to the points and invites to other events. And nobody is saying that others shouldn't have a career, I'm just not sure you should be supported at the cost of a better scene and better talent. Honestly kind of on point to NBA/WNBA and how the NBA funds the WNBA's existence. They can live, but until they have a product or ability that is better they haven't earned more. Meanwhile the lesser scenes IMO might have earned a TINY bit less financially but had massive benefits not only in opposition faced, but in easy WCS points and event invites. 7. I don't really care about region lock what so ever. It wouldn't have mattered if the money was where it was supposed to be. Nobody is moving from Korea to NA or EU to farm that WCS event if the 1st place WCS EU was 25th place's prize pool for GSL, and they recived no points for other events. If they were content with that, so be it, good for them, but I don't think you would have even had to address it at that point. 8. You say the the goal was global and what not. And to not replace the OSL/MSl/GSL proleague etc or what not. They rode the twitch/esports boom up, built off the grass roots of those entities. They froze those same entities out and creates a somewhat diverse system. But did nothing to assist in the bubble pop, and have destroyed all of their esports leagues. And while we might have some niche diversity worldwide, we'd still have that without Blizzard's existence because of twich, and if they had never frozen out those other events or money grabbed them, there would still be a foreign scene. So now we have a pretty weak scene, heavily diluted, with far less than there was before all of this even happened. Maybe not far less, but inflation etc. 9. While I'm thinking of it honestly by now it is too bad there isn't a global entity for all of esports that holds the money for prize pools. It could be such a simple thing, but it would probably take too much coordination to get started. 10. Teams. CS2 teams fund themselves without any support outside of their own deals. COD teams do as well. SCBWs teams funded themselves. Salaries varied, demand varied. But they managed to do it on their own. I'm not sure if I do or don't put any blame on Blizzard, but also a lot of it has to do with SC2 not being a team game. Also some of it had to do with teams being weirdly competitive in signing talent and breaking the bank. As for the BW teams I think that was a weird entity/time period. Almost no salaries, proleague was massive, also even if a team itself wasn't directly profitable it was a marketing expense and perhaps that exposure alone was justification. The evolution and changing of everything not just limited to teams means there isn't always just one thing to look at and I think specifically teams and SC2 is perhaps a bit too complex for anyone to ever understand. I will try to keep it quick aswell: 1. Prize money was where the viewership was and where Blizzard saw the opportunities to grow. Was that completly fair? No, but that wasn't the goal. Blizzard idea also wasn't wrong as proven by Riot: They essentially do the same, even though the Korean LCK is atleast at the top much stronger than the EU LEC. But you have a global playerbase, global opportunities to join the pro-scenes and therefore also global viewership with lots of "local heroes". 2. The entire world had to share for some time the same amount of BlizzCon-Slots than Korea. Korean Topdogs also dominated every global qualifier. We really don't need to pity the korean scene at these times... 3. I mean, eventually it was GSL/GOM/Afreeca who run it into the ground, so yeah, feels like they fucked that up big time? 4. Literally every developer did that. Riot started out with cooperations with ESL, Counterstrike was run by so many different orgs etc. And now, every developer dictates the rule of their games, the entire economy and scene. Some cooperate with others, some just do it themselves. 5. The entire thing got massively better with Blizzards envolvement. Sure, there were still hiccups (still are today), but it got SO much better for everyone involved. I also don't understand how you don't want Blizzard involved, but at the same time they "should have collected the money" for each event? That feels contradictory... And paying them to run their game? That's not only a weird idea on a general basis, but they literally put millions of dollars into the game, essentially paying ESL and GSL to run their game? 6. As I said before: You can cut the payment of a NBA player many times for each individual national league before you reach a salary that the player can't live from anymore. How much money can you take from the GSL prizemoney before a player can't live from that? 7. "Region-lock would have been okay if the Money was where it was supposed to be" - it was. And it is honestly a weird take to think Korea just had the natural rights to be the center of SC2. What if Blizzard had actually followed your train of thought? Their own Proleague, their own Starleague...but in the US. Basically like the Overwatch League. All Koreans would have needed to come over and play? Would have that been fine for you? All the money at one point, that point just happened to be not Korea? 8. Of course Blizzard hoped that BroodWar "dies". Blizzard actively killed WC3 for SC2. Because they released their new game and hoped it would be the next big thing. So of course they wanted BroodWar gone...not that there was much BroodWar to kill outside of Korea. Same as Valve killed 1.6 and Source with Global Offensive...why would you compete with yourself? And sure, Blizzard was riding the Twitch-Hype...multiple times btw, I sometimes feel Hearthstone invented the "modern streamer". But that alone didn't guarantee the success of the game. Blizzard invested heavily, even pre-WCS. But sure, maybe things could have gone better without WCS...could have gone a lot worse aswell. Remember that GSL got its massive prizepool also from Blizzard. Maybe without Blizzard-intervention at all, there is no GSL. They run two seasons and fail miserably, while Kespa has no interest to switch to a new game. So there is no incentive to play SC2 in Korea and the game is gone from there, with maybe players like Mvp trying to make it outside of Korea. That is, in my opinion, a completly realistic scenario. 9. And what would that change? You can't even get all big team spors into one room, why would it work with gaming? EWC Foundation will surely try, but Valve, Blizzard and especially Riot are far too stubborn for that. What we need in Esports is very hands-on developers. I know not everyone likes it, but I will always defend that Riot created the perfect esports scene for their game. 10. Teams in CS2 are not profitable. Most orgs literally bankrupt themselves, needing constant input of cash from the outside. Even ESL burns through massive amounts of cash each year. Riot recently adressed this problem for LoL and tried to push for more sustainability, opening more revenue options for themselves and the teams. But in general, Esports is still sadly a business in constant need of investment. It feels like you put a lot of blame on Blizzard, while simultaneously ignoring all the work they have done for the game. And while you might hate Blizzard for their investments into the foreign scene instead of spending every dim on Korea, eventually that was the right call, as the korean scene was far too small to support a potentially global success like SC2. And if anything, the korean scene might be thankful for the money sunk into GSL instead of Blizzard just saying "well, if you want to play, just move to Europe, there are the viewers anyway." 1. Was it really based off viewership? I mean we don't even have GOM numbers right? As for growing I get that, but a minimal investment in those scenes keeping them operating and viable was what was needed. I wasn't suggesting eliminating all funding. I just don't think that #1 EU WCS should receive anywhere near the support as #1 GSL winner. See and that would still be unfair, but perfectly fine, and I mean unfair because EU I'm not sure deserved even that much. As for the "growing" they were trying to do, honestly the WCS effort I don't think had much to do with it, people were hungry regardless for anything SC2 related. Just look at the weekend events. I do get trying to be universal, in some regard, but not at the cost of better teams/players getting far less than people simply because they live in an easier location to farm. 2. As for the entire world sharing the same slots to Blizzcon I still think that was a shame too and not for the foreign side of things, they got far more all things considered. At the end of the day if you're hosting a competition I see room for having avenues all over, but not that extreme. You should have the best of the best HEAVILY at any event especially if it is invite only. The only question to ask is were there better players sitting at home than the ones that got a free pass while playing in a weaker scene and collecting free prize money. The answer to that is for sure yes. Maybe a ranking system should have been put in place to determine a bit of it. 3. Not entirely sure about who ran what into the ground. I know that blizzard's limitations weren't a joke. But GSL/GOM/Afreeca weren't the leaders of events in Korea until Blizzard started favoring them. Then with the killing of SCBW at the time it eliminated their viability. And with the general interest dwindling down and them causing unreparable harm to the BW scene what was really left? Nobody else was there to support the otherside, meanwhile if OSL/MSL/Proleague/BW still existed there might be some more general interest in SC2 to this day. 4. You are right a ton of people took over to make things more organized. Meanwhile those companies are directly funding the events, have pay requirements for players, and haven't backed out of their scenes. Blizzard came to leech off the success of them, take over, charge them money, killed off competition, and then ran away. There is a big difference IMO between the two. And SC2 isn't the only Acti-Blizz title that is suffering massively due to their own stupidity. 5. I don't want Blizzard involved with managing events or leeching off them. I don't think that the only fee to running an event is that Blizzard holds the prize pool is a massive ask. Though again later on I talked about a separate entity. Either way would have been fine. But Blizzard in control of anything esports related was bound to go this way. 6. I don't know is every single Code S player at the time able to fund their existence from their full time job, while hobbyists can collect that same cash in other supported events globally? Should I be able to walk onto a pickup game at the park and earn the same money as an EU league player? There are retirements and game switchers and streamers who backed off or sacraficed their competitive ability due to finances who were better than those who were getting the bag in the other circuts. 7. CS best players are EU, main events and organization surround EU. SCBW best players are KOR main events in KOR. COD best players NA (usually) main events in NA. SC2 best players in KOR mainly, but hey let's be the weird one and make this game super global. And it isn't about some sort of natual right they had the players and the infastructure already there. 8. Valve didn't kill 1.5 with source. Nor either with CSGO as events were still allowed to run on the previous titles. Eventually when GO cleaned up tournaments/money/players all volunatarily moved to GO. This of course didn't happen with CS2 as they did kill off GO in that you simply cannot play it. And one would argue that the transition made to GO went more smoothly than to CS2 because nobody was rushed and it gave time for them to update the game. As to competition for the starcraft series, why remaster the game you tried to kill a few years previously lol? And who says SC2 wouldn't have been better even with BW around? We won't know because blizzard again had to step in. Sure you are right maybe there isn't a GSL without Blizzard, perhaps there is OSL/MSL/Starleage for SC2. We don't know b/c Blizzard killed those too. Which killed the remaining teams which were trying to stay alive. All in order to ride the hype of work everyone else put in, leech off that success, just to bail out, leaving a fairly weak scene. It actually isn't as bad as I thought it was, but still a very dead worldwide game now. Dead probably isn't the right term, but completely decimated perhaps? Just like they did with BW and OWL and CDL. See because those entities all existed for years before Blizzard even thought about esports without any Blizzard funding what so ever. 9. That someone would have the prize pool ahead of time and less schenanigans. They could also state before an event happens if they have the money or not. So you could still choose to go, but I bet a lot of people would skip it. You're talking about big companies when you're talking about valve/blizzard/riot. I'm not talking about their funds because they pay and they could easiyl be sued. I'm talking about if JoeShmo SC2 tournament wants to advertise a 2000 prize pool tournament that entity would hold that cash. It didn't HAVE to be a 4th party (?) it could have just as well been Blizzard who said you must have the prize pool up front or valve or whoever. But then at least a known entity is on the hook for it. 10. Profitibility in CS2 depends on a wide factor. There are certainly some profitable ones. Though you are right some TOs and Orgs are betting on the future or dilution to make ends meet. But those are rolling dice that they chose to pick up. Meanwhile there are plenty of successful cases, honestly the best being the Korean market as their funding was essentially a marketing campaign year after year. So teams weren't diluting themselves or losing control or gambling, so much as they were a tool for companies to use to advertise, and the product was attached to SC players. Outside of that I'm not sure anyone did as great, but so many fell into the bubble trap. I do put most of all of the blame on Blizzard for sure. I'm not neglecting some efforts were made, but it was nothing crazy, nor impressive, and was leeching in nature. Their entire esports portfolio since their involvement has largely collapsed while others are maintaining just fine. LOL/Valorant? Dota2/CS? And they didn't have to kill off anything to fake their success. So you can't blame the collapse solely on the bubble as they all existed in that same bubble. It feels like you think that Blizzard did something that others weren't already doing and had good intentions, when in reality they just wanted to leech money off of everyone, which is why Acti Blizzard titles are struggling or dying or dead while the rest are doing fine. Won't answer to each point, since essentially they start to meddle a bit. 1. Prizepool distribution We won't find a common point here. To get your point across, you would have needed to half if not more the prizepool of EU and AM, which essentially stops it being worth for a larger playerbase. Which would in return just led to the BW-Korea-Circlejerk that barely anyone cared about globally. 2. Blizzard "run away" Blizzard paid SC2 Esports for ten+ years. TEN YEARS. And to a point when SC2 long stopped being profitable. Blizzard run away from Heroes of the Storm, that is true. But SC2? No, just no. Calling that "they leeched off and then left" is false and honestly disrespectful. 3. Blizzard and BroodWar Blizzard didn't kill OSL/MSL/OPL. They weren't forbidden to run. The entire conflicht was about who is in charge of Starcraft. Kespa wanted to keep their position, so they refused SC2 in the beginning. But eventually, the change to the new game had to be made. It's not like BroodWar was doing amazingly well either. In the two seasons prior to the switch to SC2, Proleague lost four teams. And it is not like Proleague suddenly returned with SC:R. Blizzard stopped caring for BroodWar long ago, then they stopped caring for WC3, just putting all efforts into SC2. And only after SC2 stopped being a relevant project SC:R got done. And Blizzard even paid for that game with some tournaments, including their own Starleague in Korea. Again, I'm really not sure what you wanted here? Apparently that Blizzard goes to Kespa/OGN, gives them all the money in the world and says "don't worry, the global playerbase will surely catch up and soon play in Proleague aswell"? Why would they do that if the goal is to create a global enviroment? OGN didn't care at all about the global playerbase, why would they? They are literally Korea-only. 4. Korea should be the focus. You are mistaken if you think tournaments are just hosted were the highest level of skill is. CS2 is spread out all across the world, the next Major will be in Shanghai, even though literally no Chinese team (and barely any Asian team) will have a shot at the title. Europe usually gets the most qualifying spots, but the entire game tries to present itself globally. Riot is present in all regions, but yet again, Worlds for example wander between regions. The Overwatch League was dominated by korean players, but the League itself got based in the US. With CoD you are correct, but there is the snatch: CoD is mostly big in the US, in terms of Esports it isn't particularly interesting in Europe. So it doesn't make any sense to host games here. You host your tournament where it makes the most economical sense. And for SC2, Korea isn't particularly a hotspot. In the end, it is easier to get ten korean players to a hyping arena in Dallas than the Dallas-crowd to Seoul. You can see that in traditional sports aswell. For example, the NFL is currently trying to expand to Europe, especially Germany. Hosting multiple games per season in german football/soccer stadiums. Are they doing that because the NFL wants to harness the great potential of germanys American Football players? No, but in the last ten years, the Super Bowl has become kind of a trend here and people get more interested in American Football...so the NFL tries to capitalize on that. And while it is easier said than done...that would have probably been something the GSL and Proleague needed to be doing. Have one of three GSL finals per year in America and Europe (I think they one-time had GSL Finals at BlizzCon or something like that?). 5. CS2 teams are profitable They are in fact not. They all are costing off sticker-money. The T3 scene is collapsing with ESL pulling out of national events and now with Valves changes towards the Major qualification, even more teams are disbanding. One of the best teams in the world (FaZe) just recently had to be sold, since the entire org was down in the shits and needed fresh cash. BW Proleague worked because, as you said, it was marketing towards the home-market. But how many of the Proleague-sponsors are even operating outside of Korea? I can only really think of Samsung. It was cool and amazing, but it was also only working in a niche. A niche you can't really build your new big game around.
1. Nobody said you had to eliminate it entirely or even take half. But again this wasn't the only issue with Blizzard's preference and style of ruining their esports titles. And you don't know that it would have lead to anything except for a more stable scene. Perhaps instead eliminating WCS all together and sponsoring the actual TO's instead and forcing everyone to adhere to a schedule they set. There would still be an advantage to EU/NA as those events would be held there and participated in by most of the players. And while you say "barely anyone cared about" it was a 15 year old game at the time. There was still plenty of global interest for that game, but if there really was no interest why did they feel the need to cut out it's legs?
2. Blizzard paid what? A miniscule sum of money over 10 years leeching off the competetive and tournament scene they did absolutely nothing to build? They saw that they were finally about to make money and came to siphon off every drop they could possible get. Eliminating competition for whoever was going to pay them the most. It isn't the least bit disrespectful, more of an accurate assessment of the worth of Blizzard in esports. Hearthstone, SC2, War3, BW, OWL, have all but died or are shadows of their formerselves becuase of Blizzard's interference. SC2 probably would have not only done better without them, but would be stronger still as well.
3. Please they certainly did. They started challenging them on liscensing, and were threatening to give GOM control over broadcasting and tournaments. You are right broodwar wasn't doing great, crazy how a game that came out 15 years later and had to expansions isn't doing great right now in far less time. And that BW scene yeah it shrunk a bit, but it was due to a Korean recession moreso than anything else, not due to suddenly people not wanting to watch. And since it was largely fueled by massive companies that were shortening their budgets that was the downfall of those teams. And you're right they didn't make some massive come back because they were thwarted and killed off by moves Blizzard made.
No nobody was asking for Blizzard to fund them, just not mess with what they had unless they planned to shoulder all the responsibility. KESPA/OGN and most of the korean entities had over a decade of not needing Blizzard, sure the recession got to a few teams, but they didn't need Blizzard to save them. And they could have created a global SC2 scene without messing with BW or even the status quo, they chose to, so they could eliminate their competition and make it look like they did it all on their own. They easily could have had GSL and WCS without forcing the hand of the current situation, but that wasn't the route they chose.
4. Nobody said only held in area where the best talent is, but they are largely located nearer to the population center. We aren't hosting crossfire tournaments here in NA. And just because CS2 has a few one offs and a rotation major local doesn't change the fact that like 85% of the events are in EU or somewhat EU centric. As for the global entities for Valorant/LoL they fully support their own structure, and because all of the participants are taken care of they can be as global as they please. Strange though they didn't have to exit LoL, oh that's right because they built it up themselves, and when they did take over, they shouldered the responsibility of carrying it through.
5. Again each team is different in CS2. Is faze profitable? No, they went broke and had to sell themselves from over extending. Are vitality/G2? Nope. But are Mouz/VP/Ence/Col/Heroic/Mongolz? Yup. The teams that are buying trophies are the broke ones. But there are sustainable teams, especially MOUZ who is winning in all regards. They're farming bonus sticker money, selling off players, and have a budget roster, while winning events. But that depends on how you run your team, but there certainly are avenues to be profitable in CS2 without reliance on sticker money.
As for who would sponsor the teams outside of Korea well that is a weird one isn't it? I mean with all the conflicts and what not. But TO's outside don't seem to allow sponsorships as much to be visibile so that isn't as much of a thing now is it? I would guess some companies would consider it, but even then you still have the issue with TO sponsors. Like if Intel is sponsoring IEM, but AMD is sponsoring Faze who gets to show out? Honestly I think it should be both, but that is sort of a tecnical/legal issue taht probably boils down to the TO winning.
I do find it strage that despite all the evidence, maybe not directly linked or sourced, but just all the chaos surrouding Blizzard and their titles and esports, you can't see they were cancerous leeches to the entire esports scene. They tried to steal the concept of Dota because it was first created in their game, even though it was conceptualized outside of it. They swooped in and cut off most every TO out there, who were already doing a better job than they ever could. The pennies they added were to hype themselves up, meanwhile TO's have been securing prize pools and funding since before Blizzard knew what an esport was. They're constantly cycling their trash concepts of games, hell SC2 cost 180 to buy in total, but honestly contentwise is inferior to broodwar be it campaign length, bnet 1.0 vs 2.0, UMS possibilities. They created a league to stifle out competition in their shooter game, just to default on that same league a few years later. They have actively harassed any entity that could potentially get in their way of siphoning money out of a system they took no part in for over a decade for almost any of their games. But sure all the dead TO's, Teams, The fading of all the esports in their titles, the online interface that was worse than bnet 1.0, and the piss poor servers, that was just all a coincidence lol. Best part is BW is still going on, the grass root or korean BW scene they tried to kill is nearing 25 years, blizzard lasted 10 while leeching off their and other competitive scene's work lol.
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On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high
I made that list (which lacks a Serral win vs Shin, my bad!) to respond a person that emitted a deranged comment. GSL is still an on pair tournament to ESL big events (besdies kato and the Saudi cup this year).
ESL Dallas is wider in terms of amount of players, but at the end of the day, if you are seeded, the depth of the Tourney is similar as this year's GSL. Even in terms of the quality of contender players, both are quite similar, with 5 out of 8 ESL playoffs occupied by GSL participants. (6 if we take into account Reynor's participation in GSL).
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Northern Ireland24511 Posts
On June 27 2024 16:16 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high I made that list (which lacks a Serral win vs Shin, my bad!) to respond a person that emitted a deranged comment. GSL is still an on pair tournament to ESL big events (besdies kato and the Saudi cup this year). ESL Dallas is wider in terms of amount of players, but at the end of the day, if you are seeded, the depth of the Tourney is similar as this year's GSL. Even in terms of the quality of contender players, both are quite similar, with 5 out of 8 ESL playoffs occupied by GSL participants. (6 if we take into account Reynor's participation in GSL).
Aye plus the bracket gods must be acknowledged.
Some GSL championship runs are rougher than an ESL, sometimes it’s the other way around.
They’re different formats, not just in terms of prep but depending on how an ESL is doing things I feel sometimes it can be more forgiving in ways. A decent group and winning it really does make it considerably easier sometimes than GSL depending on aforementioned gods, as it does give a bigger leg up
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On June 27 2024 16:16 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:
In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??
Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high I made that list (which lacks a Serral win vs Shin, my bad!) to respond a person that emitted a deranged comment. GSL is still an on pair tournament to ESL big events (besdies kato and the Saudi cup this year). ESL Dallas is wider in terms of amount of players, but at the end of the day, if you are seeded, the depth of the Tourney is similar as this year's GSL. Even in terms of the quality of contender players, both are quite similar, with 5 out of 8 ESL playoffs occupied by GSL participants. (6 if we take into account Reynor's participation in GSL).
GSL isnt on pair with WCS globals/finals for the simple reason that Serral doesnt play it.
And its not an exageration, if you compute the rate of which Serral has won the last WC/season finals.
Ill bet that Maru's chances rise enormously with you take Serral off of it (and any other players)
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On June 27 2024 13:28 NoobSkills wrote:
1. Nobody said you had to eliminate it entirely or even take half. But again this wasn't the only issue with Blizzard's preference and style of ruining their esports titles. And you don't know that it would have lead to anything except for a more stable scene. Perhaps instead eliminating WCS all together and sponsoring the actual TO's instead and forcing everyone to adhere to a schedule they set. There would still be an advantage to EU/NA as those events would be held there and participated in by most of the players. And while you say "barely anyone cared about" it was a 15 year old game at the time. There was still plenty of global interest for that game, but if there really was no interest why did they feel the need to cut out it's legs?
On a much smaller scale than SC2, Microsoft is currently pumping money into AoE 2. They don't organize anything themselves, they just fund TOs out of the community (mostly streamers, so not companies like ESL). And you know what? Those TOs STILL have to adhere to Microsofts schedule. Because wow, Microsoft doesn't want two S-Tier tournaments at the same time, practically splitting the pro-players in half and weakening the effect of each tournament. So even IF Blizzard would have been crazy enough to just throw money at multiple TOs to host their own events, all of these TOs still would have done everything aligned with Blizzards interests. You can't have the money without the say...
2. Blizzard paid what? A miniscule sum of money over 10 years leeching off the competetive and tournament scene they did absolutely nothing to build? They saw that they were finally about to make money and came to siphon off every drop they could possible get. Eliminating competition for whoever was going to pay them the most. It isn't the least bit disrespectful, more of an accurate assessment of the worth of Blizzard in esports. Hearthstone, SC2, War3, BW, OWL, have all but died or are shadows of their formerselves becuase of Blizzard's interference. SC2 probably would have not only done better without them, but would be stronger still as well.
Miniscule sum? Are you high or something? Blizzard funded WCS for years, they funded GSL right from the get-go (in part so it could even hold up against OGN/Kespa). And even after they jumped out, they still paid ESl for another two years before finally leaving. They didn't "siphon" anything. Pretty sure they lost a huge sum of cash on their entire Esport investment.
BW and War3 were "hit" by the release of SC2 more than anything else...and of course the fact that you could make actual money there as a player. That was right after the first big economical bubble-burst in Esports, too. Hearthstone was never really an "Esports-game", yet Blizzard threw money at it. And Overwatch was designed mostly from the start to end up in OWL...which then of course failed in the end, but that seems more to be a problem with "Blizzard as the developer" and not "Blizzard the TO". And just a reminder, we are purely talking about "Blizzard the TO" here.
And yeah, pretty sure SC2 wouldn't have done better without Blizzard money. In fact, the game would probably looked like it does today for ten years instead. So basically worse, since I can't imagine 14-year-old Maru and 15-year old Reynor jumping into SC2 if you are playing for peanuts most of the time. Especially Maru would have certainly done something different...who knows, maybe he would be in LoL now not winning Worlds.
3. Please they certainly did. They started challenging them on liscensing, and were threatening to give GOM control over broadcasting and tournaments. You are right broodwar wasn't doing great, crazy how a game that came out 15 years later and had to expansions isn't doing great right now in far less time. And that BW scene yeah it shrunk a bit, but it was due to a Korean recession moreso than anything else, not due to suddenly people not wanting to watch. And since it was largely fueled by massive companies that were shortening their budgets that was the downfall of those teams. And you're right they didn't make some massive come back because they were thwarted and killed off by moves Blizzard made.
You really should read-up on the entire thing, because it really didn't happen (as far as we publicly know) as you think. It wasn't Blizzard pummeling on poor Kespa/OGN. In fact, Kespa started first, bullying GomTV, trying to get rid of it by blocking their players to compete in their events - which was still in BroodWar btw. The only "moves" Blizzard did to destroy the old system was a)release a new game...shame on them and b)not just give in into all demands Kespa made.
Not saying Blizzard was completly innocent, they certainly did come in strong, being the first who actually said "fuck this, this our game, we have the rights to everything related to it"...a thing anyone else does by now, too.
4. Nobody said only held in area where the best talent is, but they are largely located nearer to the population center. We aren't hosting crossfire tournaments here in NA. And just because CS2 has a few one offs and a rotation major local doesn't change the fact that like 85% of the events are in EU or somewhat EU centric. As for the global entities for Valorant/LoL they fully support their own structure, and because all of the participants are taken care of they can be as global as they please. Strange though they didn't have to exit LoL, oh that's right because they built it up themselves, and when they did take over, they shouldered the responsibility of carrying it through.
It aren't "a few". ESL as the forerunner especially is trying to make the competition as global as possible. Sure, EU is still holding the majority, but might I remind you that the EU (not to mention Europe as a whole) alone has eight to nine times the residents of South Korea. And the fanbase here for Counterstrike is gigantic. So it makes sense. What's not making sense is hosting everything SC2-related in Korea...
And was for the LoL/Valo thing...of course Riot didn't kill off LoL for Valo. For one, they are entirely different genres, so they are not competing with each other, but instead support each other. And also...Blizzard didn't kill off BW in Korea (everywhere else, again, it was dead anyway). They didn't say "Kespa has to close down everything". It just became hugely unsuistanable with SC2 being around, the economical crisis and companies in Korea probalby wanting to jump onto the new ship.
5. Again each team is different in CS2. Is faze profitable? No, they went broke and had to sell themselves from over extending. Are vitality/G2? Nope. But are Mouz/VP/Ence/Col/Heroic/Mongolz? Yup. The teams that are buying trophies are the broke ones. But there are sustainable teams, especially MOUZ who is winning in all regards. They're farming bonus sticker money, selling off players, and have a budget roster, while winning events. But that depends on how you run your team, but there certainly are avenues to be profitable in CS2 without reliance on sticker money.
Pretty sure Heroic is broke af aswell. And the financial situation of MOUZ for example remains to be seen. I would say they are holding up and are not in crisis, but I personally wouldn't bet money that they are profitable to a bigger degree. But I don't want to digress into this too much further, since I honestly can't even remember why we started this particular part of the debate and how it was linked to Starcraft ._.
Closing thoughts:
First of all, I think Blizzard did one huge mistake...and ironically, it was the exact opposite of what you think. Blizzard tried to have the global appeal of WC3, but still wanted Korea to enjoy its highly organized "Bubble". Sadly, that might have let to them not winning on either side of the bracket.
Riot did the opposite: Riot always said "fuck it Korea, you have the best players and teams, but you don't get any special treatment". Sure, Korea often gets the most slots for Worlds, but they are not hugely different compared to China or EMEA. And the LCK is paying out almost the same money as the LEC. And nobody there is complaining "buhu, the tenth placed team in Korea *might* (we honestly don't know) be better than the winnier of LEC, so unfair!". Okay, we do know, G2 would wreck the bottom half of LCK-teams, but anyway. That led to a global scene, a global appeal. EMEA-fans can enjoy their hometown teams, with amazingly produced games. And we can cheer for our times at global competitions, even when they usually get destroyed by the topdogs of Korea and China.
You don't need the Proleague-Kespa-Bubble.
if I had to guess, I would say you are more of a BroodWar than SC2 fan, right? And it is fine if you are pissed at the developer Blizzard, I'm not arguing there. But when it comes to supporting Esports, especially Starcraft, you are hugely unfair. And I still get the feeling you are somehow mad that Blizzard didn't release SC2 and then said "so and now Kespa gets one million bucks a year to continue to run BroodWar, because that's totally reasonable!"
I get that, I was mad in 2010 aswell, when players, TOs and viewers alike run away from WC3 towards SC2. But you can't expect Blizzard to just throw away money for everything, just so that a few people are happy and get their own game supported.
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On June 27 2024 04:49 Argonauta wrote:Show nested quote +On June 27 2024 04:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: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.
In this current world where Oliveria > all those Koreans listed
This ain’t 2017.
Current sOO and classic are a non factor in any tournaments.
Oliveria pushed Serral to the limit while the rest of the Korean terrans has been stomped by Serral for years, correction almost all the Koreans has been stomped except for zvz here and there
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EPT
