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United States339 Posts
On January 08 2025 12:21 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2025 12:04 Balnazza wrote:On January 08 2025 10:18 Nebuchad wrote:On January 08 2025 07:41 Balnazza wrote:
This feels...odd. Like SC2 players are not mature enough to make their own life choices and by giving them money we are somehow enabling them?
A lot of Esports runs "artifically" like this. Broodwar, WC3 and AoE 2 for the longest time. But sometimes, if the community keeps it up long enough, occassionally a bigger player joins in and gives some sweet-sweet offline tournament. The biggest example for me being AoE 2 and the RedBull Wololo. The scene was so far off from being professional, yet RedBull sponsored an entire circuit that culminated in the best produced RTS tournament of all time. They played Age of Empires 2 in a freaking CASTLE in Germany. It was so over-the-top epic.
...sorry, I just always get really hyped up when thinkin about the Wololo offline finals. But my point stands: There is nothing "artifical" about a community paying the scene. It's how Esport started, it is how most sports run on amateur level. In fact, it is probably much more artifical to have either the Saudis, the company behind the game or any other company put money into a scene without it being profitable. You're explaining that it can happen, of course it can happen, that's not in debate, if it couldn't happen then we wouldn't need to talk about it. I think it shouldn't happen, because there aren't enough people who are interested in dedicating their lives to playing a RTS, and if we split the scene even more than it is already split today, I can't see that working to our advantage in terms of watching RTS in the future. So people should not support players in a game they like on the offchance that some random new RTS will show up and be the next LoL? Pretty sure the chance of SC2 getting cool offline events even without ESL is still tremendously higher than the next RTS turning up in the next year. And as AoE 4 has proven: Players are willing to give any new RTS a chance, just to see how it works for them and on the offchance it might be a financial success. Which no RTS since SC2 (and technically AoE 2 Definitive Edition) has been. Hell look at GSL and their crowdfunding. They pulled a not insignificant amount of money in, when they asked. I’d argue they could have done so sooner
This gets mentioned a lot, but I think you need to consider a few things. GSL is operated by a publicly traded company, not an individual streamer or small org. If AfreecaTV wanted to do anything related to SC2, especially of this scale or to potentially profit from the use of the game in any way, it had to be approved by Blizzard. Now, also take into consideration the War Chest period from 2017 through 2020. Do you think AfreecaTV could have pushed for a crowdfunding campaign, while also receiving direct support to run the GSL, which may have potentially competed with Blizzard's own crowdfunding campaign?
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On January 08 2025 23:09 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2025 22:11 Nebuchad wrote:On January 08 2025 16:14 Balnazza wrote:
Also, as a personal note...this feels like such a uniquely SC2 perspective, it's really hard to understand for me. When SC2 came out and every big name left the WC3 scene, never did the thought of "we continue to work in the WC3 space and therefore are hurting SC2" cross my mind. We also were never critisized for it. And neither did I ever hear that sentiment in the AoE community.
There was a ton of players back then, so it didn't matter if we lost some of them who stayed in WC3 (and even more who stayed in Broodwar). Doesn't matter. It was a completly opposite mentality back then. People who stayed with WC3 often had a profound hatred or atleast dislike for SC2. I was an admin for WC3 longest running Teamleague at the time. When we even made a singular cup for SC2, we barely had any signups and got a good chunk of critisism for it aswell. Before SC2, the same was true to some extend for WoW. I mean, even Grubby recently said that he never played WoW until now because of that, it was just settled in his mind that "WoW was hurting WC3 back then, ergo WoW --> bad!" I don't know if there is an english equivalent for the word, but in German we would say that we had a "Wagenburgmentalität". A complete castling/walling against the things that did "hurt" our game and ruined our scene. Not saying it was a particularly healthy mentality, but it still feels better than just giving up completly on the offchance a new game can do something. Carries on to this day. Look at Back2Warcraft: They are obviously looking into new RTS, but that doesn't stop them from keeping WC3 as their overwhelming focus. And no one accuses them of doing a disservice or tells them to stop casting WC3 and support Stormgate instead...
I don't see how you have demonstrated that it doesn't matter. If I list up the names that are willing to play in a SC2 tournament right now and I'm being generous, I can come up to like 50. Of course we're expected to get some new names if the new game takes off, that makes sense, but we are also most likely losing some in general (to retirement, to not liking the new game), so the idea that it's not a problem if 15 or 20 of these people stay in SC2 because there's still money there... It obviously matters, much more than it did when SC2 began and we had like 300-400 people ready to play.
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Northern Ireland26497 Posts
On January 09 2025 00:01 afreecaTV.Char wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2025 12:21 WombaT wrote:On January 08 2025 12:04 Balnazza wrote:On January 08 2025 10:18 Nebuchad wrote:On January 08 2025 07:41 Balnazza wrote:
This feels...odd. Like SC2 players are not mature enough to make their own life choices and by giving them money we are somehow enabling them?
A lot of Esports runs "artifically" like this. Broodwar, WC3 and AoE 2 for the longest time. But sometimes, if the community keeps it up long enough, occassionally a bigger player joins in and gives some sweet-sweet offline tournament. The biggest example for me being AoE 2 and the RedBull Wololo. The scene was so far off from being professional, yet RedBull sponsored an entire circuit that culminated in the best produced RTS tournament of all time. They played Age of Empires 2 in a freaking CASTLE in Germany. It was so over-the-top epic.
...sorry, I just always get really hyped up when thinkin about the Wololo offline finals. But my point stands: There is nothing "artifical" about a community paying the scene. It's how Esport started, it is how most sports run on amateur level. In fact, it is probably much more artifical to have either the Saudis, the company behind the game or any other company put money into a scene without it being profitable. You're explaining that it can happen, of course it can happen, that's not in debate, if it couldn't happen then we wouldn't need to talk about it. I think it shouldn't happen, because there aren't enough people who are interested in dedicating their lives to playing a RTS, and if we split the scene even more than it is already split today, I can't see that working to our advantage in terms of watching RTS in the future. So people should not support players in a game they like on the offchance that some random new RTS will show up and be the next LoL? Pretty sure the chance of SC2 getting cool offline events even without ESL is still tremendously higher than the next RTS turning up in the next year. And as AoE 4 has proven: Players are willing to give any new RTS a chance, just to see how it works for them and on the offchance it might be a financial success. Which no RTS since SC2 (and technically AoE 2 Definitive Edition) has been. Hell look at GSL and their crowdfunding. They pulled a not insignificant amount of money in, when they asked. I’d argue they could have done so sooner This gets mentioned a lot, but I think you need to consider a few things. GSL is operated by a publicly traded company, not an individual streamer or small org. If AfreecaTV wanted to do anything related to SC2, especially of this scale or to potentially profit from the use of the game in any way, it had to be approved by Blizzard. Now, also take into consideration the War Chest period from 2017 through 2020. Do you think AfreecaTV could have pushed for a crowdfunding campaign, while also receiving direct support to run the GSL, which may have potentially competed with Blizzard's own crowdfunding campaign?
Yeah that’s a good point for sure.
I did like the Warchest method of boosting funds too, kinda wish Blizz had kept doing that. It was a pretty convenient method to support the scene, get some goodies and Blizz got a little revenue too
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Man if I still had my job, I would put in $1000 a year no problem. But unfortunately I have to be cautious about my spending now. 
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Zero dollars and zero cents.
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On January 09 2025 00:23 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2025 23:09 Balnazza wrote:On January 08 2025 22:11 Nebuchad wrote:On January 08 2025 16:14 Balnazza wrote:
Also, as a personal note...this feels like such a uniquely SC2 perspective, it's really hard to understand for me. When SC2 came out and every big name left the WC3 scene, never did the thought of "we continue to work in the WC3 space and therefore are hurting SC2" cross my mind. We also were never critisized for it. And neither did I ever hear that sentiment in the AoE community.
There was a ton of players back then, so it didn't matter if we lost some of them who stayed in WC3 (and even more who stayed in Broodwar). Doesn't matter. It was a completly opposite mentality back then. People who stayed with WC3 often had a profound hatred or atleast dislike for SC2. I was an admin for WC3 longest running Teamleague at the time. When we even made a singular cup for SC2, we barely had any signups and got a good chunk of critisism for it aswell. Before SC2, the same was true to some extend for WoW. I mean, even Grubby recently said that he never played WoW until now because of that, it was just settled in his mind that "WoW was hurting WC3 back then, ergo WoW --> bad!" I don't know if there is an english equivalent for the word, but in German we would say that we had a "Wagenburgmentalität". A complete castling/walling against the things that did "hurt" our game and ruined our scene. Not saying it was a particularly healthy mentality, but it still feels better than just giving up completly on the offchance a new game can do something. Carries on to this day. Look at Back2Warcraft: They are obviously looking into new RTS, but that doesn't stop them from keeping WC3 as their overwhelming focus. And no one accuses them of doing a disservice or tells them to stop casting WC3 and support Stormgate instead... I don't see how you have demonstrated that it doesn't matter. If I list up the names that are willing to play in a SC2 tournament right now and I'm being generous, I can come up to like 50. Of course we're expected to get some new names if the new game takes off, that makes sense, but we are also most likely losing some in general (to retirement, to not liking the new game), so the idea that it's not a problem if 15 or 20 of these people stay in SC2 because there's still money there... It obviously matters, much more than it did when SC2 began and we had like 300-400 people ready to play.
You said "it was no biggie that people remained with WC3, because SC2 had enough players". That is however a SC2-centric view on the shift. The WC3-perspective was completly different, no one who stayed cared at all about SC2. Which is why it is so novel to me that SC2 fans would take a "we need to led our game die for some obscure potentially new RTS"-stance.
Especially considering that there absolutely is no RTS on the horizon that has a bigger potential than SC2 itself (which was not the case with WC3 back then - WC3 will forever in my opinion be the superior RTS, but even I back then could see and acknowledge that SC2 had a much bigger potential at the time)
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I wouldn't support the game in its current state. There were times in the past where I loved this game, and gladly spent money on it (Warchests, GSL patreon, MTX, etc), but that time has long since passed.
If the game were in a state I had fun playing, and I could get into it again - I'd be willing the spend up to ~30$ CAD a month I guess.
As it stands, there's not a ton to watch, and there's all of 1 zerg streamer (SortOf) that I can only watch if I get up at 6am, and watching that is enough to tilt me let alone playing lol
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the amount of hot/shit takes in this thread is astonishing
why not post another hate paragraph, surely gonna help everyone out over here
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
I do not see a reason why spend on a game I think is boring, stale and long term inbalanced. The scene is so small maybe it is time to let it die.
I do not pay for streams. (to be fair, I do not watch any streams so why would I pay  )
During the SC2 peak I wouldnt have a problem. Nowadays big nope. Every now and then I check the games and... they are boring. The thrill is long gone.
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I am atm spending around 210 euro/year (~17 Euro/month on patreon Cranky Ducklings (my fav content atm i think, thanks for the content ),GSL, Korean SC league ) and i think i would stay at this level, unless my financial situation improved then maybe i could go a bit higher. I would love to also support Winter, Harstem or Wardi (for his tournaments mostly)
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On January 08 2025 12:21 CicadaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2025 12:04 Balnazza wrote:On January 08 2025 10:18 Nebuchad wrote:On January 08 2025 07:41 Balnazza wrote:
This feels...odd. Like SC2 players are not mature enough to make their own life choices and by giving them money we are somehow enabling them?
A lot of Esports runs "artifically" like this. Broodwar, WC3 and AoE 2 for the longest time. But sometimes, if the community keeps it up long enough, occassionally a bigger player joins in and gives some sweet-sweet offline tournament. The biggest example for me being AoE 2 and the RedBull Wololo. The scene was so far off from being professional, yet RedBull sponsored an entire circuit that culminated in the best produced RTS tournament of all time. They played Age of Empires 2 in a freaking CASTLE in Germany. It was so over-the-top epic.
...sorry, I just always get really hyped up when thinkin about the Wololo offline finals. But my point stands: There is nothing "artifical" about a community paying the scene. It's how Esport started, it is how most sports run on amateur level. In fact, it is probably much more artifical to have either the Saudis, the company behind the game or any other company put money into a scene without it being profitable. You're explaining that it can happen, of course it can happen, that's not in debate, if it couldn't happen then we wouldn't need to talk about it. I think it shouldn't happen, because there aren't enough people who are interested in dedicating their lives to playing a RTS, and if we split the scene even more than it is already split today, I can't see that working to our advantage in terms of watching RTS in the future. So people should not support players in a game they like on the offchance that some random new RTS will show up and be the next LoL? Pretty sure the chance of SC2 getting cool offline events even without ESL is still tremendously higher than the next RTS turning up in the next year. And as AoE 4 has proven: Players are willing to give any new RTS a chance, just to see how it works for them and on the offchance it might be a financial success. Which no RTS since SC2 (and technically AoE 2 Definitive Edition) has been. Stormgate could be that game. Zerospace could be that game. Battle Aces could be that game. I think what he's saying is if we let SC2 have a peaceful death and go to one of the new games with open arms and deep pockets we can have new glory days. So instead of investing, let's say collectively $25,000 in SC2, let's put it into battle aces. Then if you get a bunch of tournaments players will come. Top players. Did u see showtime talk about this? He said what would it take for pro players to switch over to stormgate? It's as simple as money.
righ now, those games are not better than sc2, not even close.
sc2 is by far better.
i will always support sc2, 200 per year costs me nothing.
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On January 10 2025 09:50 deacon.frost wrote:I do not see a reason why spend on a game I think is boring, stale and long term inbalanced. The scene is so small maybe it is time to let it die. I do not pay for streams. (to be fair, I do not watch any streams so why would I pay ) During the SC2 peak I wouldnt have a problem. Nowadays big nope. Every now and then I check the games and... they are boring. The thrill is long gone.
boring? serral, clem, maxpax, etc are playing incredible games! not boring at all, the things those can do are amazing.
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I give Wardi $60/year and I'll keep doing that. I view it as a $5/month competitive live event streaming service.
On January 10 2025 09:50 deacon.frost wrote:
I do not see a reason why spend on a game I think is boring, stale and long term inbalanced. The scene is so small maybe it is time to let it die.
meh, Imbalance is part of diverse team games like this. Super Tecmo Bowl came out in 1991 , EA NHL '94 came out in September '93 ... both games are imbalanced. People play the games because the fun is worth tolerating imbalance. Both games have competitive communities just rolling along in 2025.
Chess is imbalanced. I'll play black and tolerate the imbalance because I enjoy the competition. If I'm 1% better than my opponent and lose due to imba game set up ... I don't care. Rarely are people motivated to play some 10 game "balanced series" to "prove themselves". They just play one game and let the chips fall where they may.
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Chess is not imbalanced lol. You're going to play both white and black like everyone else.
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On January 13 2025 09:35 Nebuchad wrote:
Chess is not imbalanced lol. You're going to play both white and black like everyone else.
many times people only have time to play 1 game. that 1 game is imbalanced. as is Super Tecmo Bowl, EA NHL '94 and I can name all kinds of great imbalanced games with very long standing competitive communities.
The only thing stopping SC2 from living forever like the games I named is Blizzard pulling the plug on the servers.
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Northern Ireland26497 Posts
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Chess ist actually a great example for it. Yes, Chess is inherently imbalanced, White historically has a higher winrate than black (not that much higher, I think it is 55/45?). But it gets balanced out through the way the game is played on the highest level and the advantage is not so great that it could overcome greater skill-differences.
That is practically the way a good RTS should be balanced aswell. There is, especially with different maps, no such thing as "perfect balance". It needs to be balanced enough that the better player and the better play wins. Which has been true for SC2 for years.
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On January 13 2025 09:41 Balnazza wrote:
Chess ist actually a great example for it. Yes, Chess is inherently imbalanced, White historically has a higher winrate than black (not that much higher, I think it is 55/45?). But it gets balanced out through the way the game is played on the highest level and the advantage is not so great that it could overcome greater skill-differences.
That is practically the way a good RTS should be balanced aswell. There is, especially with different maps, no such thing as "perfect balance". It needs to be balanced enough that the better player and the better play wins. Which has been true for SC2 for years.
This is an argument that started from the conclusion, you just wanted to say that Serral winning everything was justified so you decided it was like chess. It isn't like chess at all, that is nonsense. Nobody in chess only competes with white or with black, so any imbalance that you could declare to be happening, every professional chess player will be on both sides of it at any point in their career.
This is up there with TvT is like chess, no it isn't like chess at all I swear nobody has any idea what chess is like ^.^
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On January 13 2025 09:47 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2025 09:41 Balnazza wrote:
Chess ist actually a great example for it. Yes, Chess is inherently imbalanced, White historically has a higher winrate than black (not that much higher, I think it is 55/45?). But it gets balanced out through the way the game is played on the highest level and the advantage is not so great that it could overcome greater skill-differences.
That is practically the way a good RTS should be balanced aswell. There is, especially with different maps, no such thing as "perfect balance". It needs to be balanced enough that the better player and the better play wins. Which has been true for SC2 for years. This is an argument that started from the conclusion, you just wanted to say that Serral winning everything was justified so you decided it was like chess. It isn't like chess at all, that is nonsense. Nobody in chess only competes with white or with black, so any imbalance that you could declare to be happening, every professional chess player will be on both sides of it at any point in their career. This is up there with TvT is like chess, no it isn't like chess at all I swear nobody has any idea what chess is like ^.^
Nice to see that Serral lives rent-free in your head?
But just to please you: Yes, chess is not like SC2. Because one is played on a PC with high APM and a lot of different units and maps, while the other is played on a board with a very limited set of units and has (in the traditional variant) barely any APM requirement. There is also the fact that chess frequently ends in draws, while SC2 barely ever ends in a draw. Chess is also a lot less volatile, meaning the amount of time the "better player" wins compared to SC2 is tremendously high.
The comparison "xxx is like Chess" doesn't mean "literally every aspects of it are like Chess". It is about certain aspects of it fitting. Spoiler alert: When casters say "Early ZvZ is a knife-fight", they don't mean a literal knife-fight. Rarely do knife-fights in reallife involve walking acid-grenades.
And don't get me started on "Rasen-Schach"...
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On January 13 2025 10:58 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2025 09:47 Nebuchad wrote:On January 13 2025 09:41 Balnazza wrote:
Chess ist actually a great example for it. Yes, Chess is inherently imbalanced, White historically has a higher winrate than black (not that much higher, I think it is 55/45?). But it gets balanced out through the way the game is played on the highest level and the advantage is not so great that it could overcome greater skill-differences.
That is practically the way a good RTS should be balanced aswell. There is, especially with different maps, no such thing as "perfect balance". It needs to be balanced enough that the better player and the better play wins. Which has been true for SC2 for years. This is an argument that started from the conclusion, you just wanted to say that Serral winning everything was justified so you decided it was like chess. It isn't like chess at all, that is nonsense. Nobody in chess only competes with white or with black, so any imbalance that you could declare to be happening, every professional chess player will be on both sides of it at any point in their career. This is up there with TvT is like chess, no it isn't like chess at all I swear nobody has any idea what chess is like ^.^ Nice to see that Serral lives rent-free in your head? But just to please you: Yes, chess is not like SC2. Because one is played on a PC with high APM and a lot of different units and maps, while the other is played on a board with a very limited set of units and has (in the traditional variant) barely any APM requirement. There is also the fact that chess frequently ends in draws, while SC2 barely ever ends in a draw. Chess is also a lot less volatile, meaning the amount of time the "better player" wins compared to SC2 is tremendously high. The comparison "xxx is like Chess" doesn't mean "literally every aspects of it are like Chess". It is about certain aspects of it fitting. Spoiler alert: When casters say "Early ZvZ is a knife-fight", they don't mean a literal knife-fight. Rarely do knife-fights in reallife involve walking acid-grenades. And don't get me started on "Rasen-Schach"...
But see this is just nonsense again, because the problem wasn't that I misunderstood you as saying "every aspect of chess is like SC2", which you would get to now accurately counter with this post, the problem was the actual argument that you were making, that there is a similarity between imbalance in SC2 and "imbalance in chess", and that those two topics belong in the same conversation. They do not. At all. For obvious reasons.
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EPT
