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United States33584 Posts
On November 04 2025 19:06 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2025 04:22 Balnazza wrote:On November 03 2025 20:43 Waxangel wrote:On November 03 2025 17:44 doktordingerdonger wrote:On November 03 2025 09:05 WombaT wrote:On November 03 2025 08:50 doktordingerdonger wrote:
Serral would not be top 100 in 2014 with that level of competition, or if the level of competition be the same in 2025 as in 2014.
Serral would not make it into a KESPA team not even as a dishwasher.
If Serral was Korean, his achievements would be completely dismissed given the complete collapse of the scene post-2015. Because he is white, the complete collapse of the scene post-2015 is instead dismissed entirely by 90% of white dudes here. SC2 avg viewership is 1k. That is not a scene, that is a niche.
The whole glaze of Serral just reeks of ethnonationalism. Well that’s… a take. Here is the thing: during Kespa, 12 hour a day 7 days a week was the absolute norm for both a and b-teamers. No white dude was willing to do that. So how many people active now actually play more than 8 hours a day? There have been koreans not even playing for months or laddering at all going into EWC. Now with the uncertainty of EWC and that without saudi money, the prize pool would barely be able to finance 2 dudes full time, how many people are actually willing to put in the numbers for the magic of lifting a trophy of a, maybe, tournament in the 'highly prestigious' saudi tournament? At least BW streamers make money with streaming more than ever. You cannot seriously dismiss a sc2 scene on life support and yet believe that serral would thrive during kespa days. He would go down like any other foreigner before him. Serral, Reynor and Clem are nothing special. They just are playing sc2 during an era where nobody cares about it anymore. While regimented KeSPA practice was definitely an advantage, I think you're somewhat overrating it compared to the general talent-scouting advantage that the institution of Korean esports has. Korea's edge in global esports (at least games it's popular in) is that it has a big player base combined with the best and most realistic path-to-pro ecosystem in the entire world (relatively speaking; it's still obviously very hard to become a successful pro). This leads to Korea being the best at discovering great talents, and then pushing them along a semi-pro/pro path. When you consider Serral's crazy level of natural ability, I feel like a TaeJa-esque career is a realistic low-end outcome if you dropped him into 2014, with the potential for a lot more upside (I don't know if he would dominate, but he could be a championship level player). This is essentially why some people don't understand the impact of regionlock. The take "regionlock killed the korean scene and therefore everyone else did get better" is just false, there isn't even a reason why regionlock should have killed a scene. What happened was it created a relatively speaking stable path into pro for foreigners aswell, without the pressure exerted by players that trained in the best teamhouses in the world and already had a stable monetary and experience base to compete on a very high level. Without regionlock, Serral might just not happen. Not because he couldn't hack it, but because the risk of going fulltime pro and investing the time that he did might just not have been worth it otherwise or maybe just for a year. The lack of new korean talents is certainly a popularity problem of the game in korea, but it is also linked to the fact that by now there is no money to be made in Korea if you start fresh. How many GSLs would you have to try starting "from 0" before you qualify for the international events, where the actual money lies? Imagine you start 'getting gud' in SC2 and the first hurdle you have to overtake to become a financially stable pro is...to take out Maru. Well good luck with that! In reverse, that is why no one of these magical "Top 100 Gigachad Ultragamers" from before just jump into the game, qualify for EWC and take the big money from the scrub Serral. Because they can't. The time-investment they would need to put in to compete with Serral, Clem, Maru, herO and so on is just way too huge and the path is barred of much money. Like...take Rain for example. Probably one of the most gifted players in Starcraft. Do you seriously think if he could he wouldn't just jump into the EWC qualifier, qualify and take the 200K home? He would probably not even miss an ASL for that. So why doesn't he do it? Altruism? Regionlock didn't single-handely kill the scene but it definitely exacerbated the downfall of korean sc2. When region-lock was introduced it forced 50+ fulltime players into an ecosystem that could only support about 30 players, forcing many of them to retire. And it removed the path to become pro for them as like you said, there's no way to beat Maru if you aren't an established top pro already. Before region-lock there was a chance a lower tier korean pro gets picked up by a foreign team to start competing in the easier foreign tournaments. After region-lock it was you can't compete in GSL you can't become a pro.
I don't really think region-lock had that much effect on the top-tier of Korean SC2. For the most part, I think it just wiped out a lot of mid-tier players who could feast overseas. Ofc, we lost a handful of guys who could actually hang with Korea's best but just found it more pragmatic to compete in WCS (TaeJa, Polt, etc), but it wasn't a devastating loss (purely talking about championship-tier talent, not the overall health of the scene).
I would say the rise of non-SC games like LoL was what REALLY precipitated the depletion of Korean SC2 talent. The last great generation of Korean SC2 pros is basically the final gen of BW up-and-comers/trainees who switched to SC2. By 2013/14, the vast majority of talented pro prospects were being funneled to LoL instead.
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Northern Ireland26489 Posts
On November 06 2025 19:51 Comedy wrote:
If you look at prize money won for sc2 players, serral and maru are absolutely leading the pack, and almost all that money was made since 2018 and on. So to say koreans stopped trying is a retarded take. Since if they were so good, they couldve made millions of dollars in prize money alone from 2018 and onwards.
Yep, an argument I frequently make.
It would be different if prize money dropped off a cliff overnight, but it didn’t.
If your argument is nobody was really bothering, well with so much money around if you do bother you’ll clean house. There’s still plenty of incentive there
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On November 07 2025 00:23 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2025 19:51 Comedy wrote:
If you look at prize money won for sc2 players, serral and maru are absolutely leading the pack, and almost all that money was made since 2018 and on. So to say koreans stopped trying is a retarded take. Since if they were so good, they couldve made millions of dollars in prize money alone from 2018 and onwards. Yep, an argument I frequently make. It would be different if prize money dropped off a cliff overnight, but it didn’t. If your argument is nobody was really bothering, well with so much money around if you do bother you’ll clean house. There’s still plenty of incentive there
Koreans didn’t stop trying. The top tier Koreans skills are still improving each year.
For example just look back at any Classic games back in the so called “golden era” 2015-2016 and compare to Classic games during his EWC run. The older current classic skills literally shits on that “younger” and “competitive era” classic
Only difference right now is that we eliminate all the mid tier Korean and foreigner from the scene. Only the cream of the crop stil plays to battle each other.
I rather have what we currently have then what we have before. It really helps to skips the useless R32 group stages in Korean or WCS when we know majority of the time there will be no upset.
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What are you on about, mid tier back then would be top tier now, just look at the dmg players like solar, shin, cure, trap and gumiho can do.
There were loads of upsets because everyone was trying their darndest, now ro32\16 is worth skipping because there aren't enough players to fill it out, which is what happened with gsl.
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Solar was mid-tier back then and Trap is top tier now?
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On November 08 2025 03:25 ejozl wrote:
What are you on about, mid tier back then would be top tier now, just look at the dmg players like solar, shin, cure, trap and gumiho can do.
There were loads of upsets because everyone was trying their darndest, now ro32\16 is worth skipping because there aren't enough players to fill it out, which is what happened with gsl.
Yeah, PartinG used to be the only player who got 10 ro16s in a row and back then it was an almost unbelievable achievement. That's how competitive even the ro32 was.
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On November 05 2025 15:41 doktordingerdonger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2025 06:40 PremoBeats wrote:
Of course they knew ahead of time. My point is that they nevertheless all qualified and most of them played for years to come. ByuN's victory was due to his reaper abuse and not some supposed Korean collapse in 2016. The erosion spaned several years and didn't happen from one year to another.
And JAGW, the Proleague winners, were KeSPA too.
We had disappointing failures througout SC2, so to draw a connection - like ejozl did - from a lack of new Korean talent to ByuN's WC, when the effects of the Proleague discontinuation could not have possibly materialized yet, seems like a stretch to me. The fact they still all qualified despite not training for months and the collapse of it rather says the opposite about what you want to support lol... Even now, some random pro who has not played in years can just come back, qualify for EWC and then fuck off simply because the saudi money is too good. There is a reason why all korean pros except very very few went all back to BW, where 100k is easy to achieve even for the top 200 player streaming and playing some daily proleague. Neeb, an absolutely unknown foreigner suddenly is the first person to win a tournament against koreans in 6 yeaers of sc2, and this forum wants to pretend this has absolutely nothing to do with the entire sc2 scene in korea collapsing after being 4 years on life support. Again, proleague had to HIRE people to cheer for the teams every day when proleague happened. During BW times, it was always about 100 people or so and they had 2-3 TV channels broadcasting broodwar nonstop, as well as variety shows etc. They had to HIRE people to pretend its not dead. Imagine how the players must have felt: SC2 is an absolute dead end and there is no point spending energy into it. And yet despite all that, no foreigner could have taken a tournament against koreans until the very end and even beyond that. And then we have this echo chamber that spouted for almost 10 years on how the rise of foreigners has absolutely nothing to do with the collapse of Korean SC2, which was on life support the entire time anyway... I am sorry, but if you had the choice between playing broodwar with its university system (making 60 million usd in donations last year) + streaming revenue from donation (about 15 million usd a year) + about 3 million usd from daily proleague each year, which by the way is quite evenly distributed, vs playing SC2 where the prize money is top heavy and it all depends whether some saudi dude we do not know decides whether to have sc2 or not, each year... it makes all achievements post Kespa in SC2 an absolute farce. And despite this whole echo chamber, there are still threads spanning dozens of pages that basically say the above here and there.
Did you strain your wrist playing SC2 or why is there this need to write such a blatantly falsely constructed comment?
Cause not only are you mixing up timelines (Neeb’s/ByuN’s wins, BW university and Saudi money in SC2), weaving in wrong factuals (how do you arrive at the conclusion that Koreans didn’t train for months?) or making a completely inverted framing about Koreans being on life support/having it hard in comparison to the foreign scene (something more akin to reality would be the Koreans being a lifter on roids who had the best equipment and a nutrition coach, but still took the protein shake from his training buddy’s home who had to train in his basement with a couple of self made weights)... you are basically defeating your own point without realizing it.
Because you are actually discrediting the pros that switched to BW. Under all the talk about BW university and the money that is being spent there, you are actually saying that these guys weren’t able to make it in SC2 with all the new competition around individual tournaments and had to switch to a game where even B-Tier players were able to make enough money through salaries/donations.
When a kid like Clem - who made his first individual top4 appearance in the 2020s - was able to grind himself to a World Championship, then I think it is pretty evident that all these Koreans either lacked the skill, motivation or a mix of both - according to your framing.
Either way: The top dogs of 2013-2016 stuck around until the early 2020s or are still actively playing even now, battling out with newer players like Clem. If the others left because of a lack of motivation, too little skill, injury or whatever other factor is irrelevant: If they were good enough, they made the easy cash grab in SC2 - but they were not.
Most of the top earners in SC2 came onto the scene post-KeSPA and made much more than the new BW-blood, so you'd have to explain why the prime-SC2-players back then didn't stick around to make this easy cash grab.
The rise of foreigners of course had something to do with the shrinking Korean scene. Money was redirected and other regions were protected from overpowered predators… that was basically the whole idea.
And to somehow link achievements in a game to the total amount of money circulating in it is - at least for your own argument - self-defeating. Because even if the numbers you posted would be somehow verified and not only posted in a reddit-thread with 12 comments and which probably includes non-game-content like tik-tok dances - as one of these 12 comments puts it (that don’t say anything about high quality competitiveness) - other games like LoL or Overwatch make way more. Now would that invalidate Brood War achievements?
As it stands, yes, the scene is way bigger in BW, but to somehow extract from that fact the idea that all achievements post KeSPA are a farce is ridiculous.
On November 08 2025 03:25 ejozl wrote:
What are you on about, mid tier back then would be top tier now, just look at the dmg players like solar, shin, cure, trap and gumiho can do.
There were loads of upsets because everyone was trying their darndest, now ro32\16 is worth skipping because there aren't enough players to fill it out, which is what happened with gsl.
How do you arrive at the conclusion that there were loads of upsets? Upsets, by definition, are notable because they happen rarely - if they’re routine, then we’re just talking about a balanced mid-tier… not higher quality.
I never looked at the newer time line, where upsets occur too. But an analysis of 2012-2016 showed that the favored player won in the vast majority of cases.
And I really can’t agree that mid tier back then equals top tier now. Most of the strongest names from that era couldn’t stay relevant past 2019/2020, even with all their experience.
I think it is more accurate to say that there simply was no super-elite at the time. You had a couple of players winning more than the rest who were ahead of another big chunk, but there simply was no one like Maru or Serral who dominated in streaks of tournaments. And I think it is clear, that the reason is not less top competition or a decline in average skill, but the excellence of these two players.
On November 08 2025 07:43 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2025 03:25 ejozl wrote:
What are you on about, mid tier back then would be top tier now, just look at the dmg players like solar, shin, cure, trap and gumiho can do.
There were loads of upsets because everyone was trying their darndest, now ro32\16 is worth skipping because there aren't enough players to fill it out, which is what happened with gsl. Yeah, PartinG used to be the only player who got 10 ro16s in a row and back then it was an almost unbelievable achievement. That's how competitive even the ro32 was.
But why was it an unbelievable achievement? In my opinion, certainly not, because the Ro32 ranks were filled with only INnos, Lifes, prime-Marus and prime-Serrals.
The biggest chunk of players that left were the ones that couldn't compete, as is evidenced by the fact that most top dogs, that were able to play, kept on playing.
For the past Ro32s this meant they were of course harder, when you had to face INno there. But you only had to do so, because there were much more mid players around to fill the other spots to even make a Ro32 possible. For the subsequent win of the tournament this isn't really of interest as you had to play the best of the best anyway sooner or later... having to defeat INno in the Ro32 or the final doesn't really matter... to win, you had to go beyond him or the player capable of eliminating him.
Another reason is that there simply wasn't a super elite like Maru or Serral. These guys mostly had the same level, which means that the competitiveness arose from the fact that there was no truly dominating player.
The first of these two observations is the reason why I gave the average place-metric in the prime-era much more positive adjustment than the tournament participation win rate. It simply was a metric that was under more impact from more mid-tier-players, as it led to a given player having to face a top beast much sooner.
Of course back then, you also had more 1-shot-players that were able to contest from time to time, although they were not the norm. But you also didn't have an above 85 % win rate monster, which is a bigger hurdle for above average players/GOAT contenders, as Monte Carlo simulations show.
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I know it sounds scientific to say that the best players are left and are the best because of process of elimination, but ask yourself, do you think more skill has left sc2 or more skill is still here?
Ppl don't want to spend their life pro gaming and waste away their future, so it makes sense to do it 100⅚, or not at all. Ppl might stick around at 80% and dilly dallying playing league or gambling in gacha games, that does not mean that serral and maru have bested their top form selves. And it made way more sense for non-koreans to continue playing because they were not descriminated against.
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Your right about upsets but I was answering that upsets never happened, with that, that is way more the case now.
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The truth is somewhere between koreans stopped trying and there's still plenty of money to be made so ofc they're still trying.
If you go from having a good steady salary and can augment it with prize winnings, game is somewhat popular etc. (also why looking only at prize money is kinda flawed) To the other extreme of no salary, couple of big tournaments that will give a lot of money.
Obviously they do and would practice for the tournaments in particular the ones with a large prize pool. But if you've been playing professionally for a decade and see most of the money go away it makes sense to either scale back your time investment or just move on completely.
As for the more or less skill in modern sc. There was a very similar discussion in bw that if you dropped any asl player into peak kespa era bw, the asl player would mop the floor due to build optimization/better meta game understanding. But given time to adjust due to the kespa team house and practice hours the raw mechanics would overtake the asl player once the builds or micro tricks etc are figured out.
I think the same kinda concept explains sc2 fairly accurately. I could be wrong but I don't think it's a coincidence that foreigners starting posted better results post kespa/team houses. I think it's more the playing field leveled off in terms of support/coaching and not necessarily that all of a sudden we have prodigy foreigners popping up for every race.
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On November 11 2025 04:00 ejozl wrote:
I know it sounds scientific to say that the best players are left and are the best because of process of elimination, but ask yourself, do you think more skill has left sc2 or more skill is still here?
Ppl don't want to spend their life pro gaming and waste away their future, so it makes sense to do it 100⅚, or not at all. Ppl might stick around at 80% and dilly dallying playing league or gambling in gacha games, that does not mean that serral and maru have bested their top form selves. And it made way more sense for non-koreans to continue playing because they were not descriminated against.
What do you mean by skill? Mechanical skill? Skill to prepare for a 1 game dice roll? Average skill, peak skill, aggregate skill?
We have interviews from back then where the players that stayed explicitly said (I remember one from INno) that they are going to do their best, are highly motivated and that people shouldn't view the Proleague end so pessimistically.
But I also don't really understand the over-arching argument here though.
Of course Maru and Serral might not have bested some players top forms (no one ever claimed that)... but the reverse is true as well. The 2015-players did not have to face prime-Maru and prime-Serral. Plus, there is no reason to assume that Maru and Serral only won because the skill of players like INnoVation - or all the other big names - massively dropped over the span of 2-3 years. Or do you have any data or observable subjective takes that would speak for this idea?
All the data that I looked at does not indicate some sort of massive drop in skill. So I'd be fine to deduct 2 or 3% because of motivation or a tad bit slower reflexes, but who knows if that was not compensated by experience.
On November 11 2025 04:18 Moonerz wrote:
As for the more or less skill in modern sc. There was a very similar discussion in bw that if you dropped any asl player into peak kespa era bw, the asl player would mop the floor due to build optimization/better meta game understanding. But given time to adjust due to the kespa team house and practice hours the raw mechanics would overtake the asl player once the builds or micro tricks etc are figured out.
I think the same kinda concept explains sc2 fairly accurately. I could be wrong but I don't think it's a coincidence that foreigners starting posted better results post kespa/team houses. I think it's more the playing field leveled off in terms of support/coaching and not necessarily that all of a sudden we have prodigy foreigners popping up for every race.
I think WombaT's point is pretty accurate. Where before, most of the money was concentrated on one region being able to surface talent, that money now has been dispersed over the whole world.
And of course, if we look at potential talent, there is statistically much more lurking in 8 billion people than in 50 million. That is simply common sense, unless we assume some racial superiority of Koreans, which could be a tad problematic 
So to me, it isn't a surprise that the rest of the world was able to catch up after Korea's scene lost revenue.
For your analogy: Wouldn't we assume that the ASL player would get a team house as well, if we dropped him in that era?
I mean sure, a team house or a well set up training environment are a huge asset... but isn't that one of the exact reasons why Koreans had this unfair advantage over the rest of the world? Big money and structural advantages to build such a multi million dollar machinery that gave them security, training, etc.?
To create a hypothetical where you build in this asymmetry seems kind of self-defeating for the argument, no?
Given how substantially the advantage of Koreans was, I think it is still pretty impressive what excellent results some non-Koreans had in the peak SC2 era.
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Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated.
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Northern Ireland26489 Posts
On November 18 2025 03:30 ejozl wrote:
Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated.
But there’s overlap. Serral is playing the people who rose to the top of the pile when there were more full-time competitive pros. So how does that factor in?
It would be different if scene contracted, all the big hitters of an era retired and then Serral became dominant. If that had actually happened, you’ve had a lot fewer people anointing him the GOAT
I don’t get why you invoke guys like MC who demonstrably couldn’t compete at the same level when Kespa players raised the bar. He had more advantages on his side of the ledger than Serral did breaking through.
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On November 15 2025 17:29 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2025 04:00 ejozl wrote:
I know it sounds scientific to say that the best players are left and are the best because of process of elimination, but ask yourself, do you think more skill has left sc2 or more skill is still here?
Ppl don't want to spend their life pro gaming and waste away their future, so it makes sense to do it 100⅚, or not at all. Ppl might stick around at 80% and dilly dallying playing league or gambling in gacha games, that does not mean that serral and maru have bested their top form selves. And it made way more sense for non-koreans to continue playing because they were not descriminated against. What do you mean by skill? Mechanical skill? Skill to prepare for a 1 game dice roll? Average skill, peak skill, aggregate skill? We have interviews from back then where the players that stayed explicitly said (I remember one from INno) that they are going to do their best, are highly motivated and that people shouldn't view the Proleague end so pessimistically. But I also don't really understand the over-arching argument here though. Of course Maru and Serral might not have bested some players top forms (no one ever claimed that)... but the reverse is true as well. The 2015-players did not have to face prime-Maru and prime-Serral. Plus, there is no reason to assume that Maru and Serral only won because the skill of players like INnoVation - or all the other big names - massively dropped over the span of 2-3 years. Or do you have any data or observable subjective takes that would speak for this idea? All the data that I looked at does not indicate some sort of massive drop in skill. So I'd be fine to deduct 2 or 3% because of motivation or a tad bit slower reflexes, but who knows if that was not compensated by experience. Show nested quote +On November 11 2025 04:18 Moonerz wrote:
As for the more or less skill in modern sc. There was a very similar discussion in bw that if you dropped any asl player into peak kespa era bw, the asl player would mop the floor due to build optimization/better meta game understanding. But given time to adjust due to the kespa team house and practice hours the raw mechanics would overtake the asl player once the builds or micro tricks etc are figured out.
I think the same kinda concept explains sc2 fairly accurately. I could be wrong but I don't think it's a coincidence that foreigners starting posted better results post kespa/team houses. I think it's more the playing field leveled off in terms of support/coaching and not necessarily that all of a sudden we have prodigy foreigners popping up for every race. I think WombaT's point is pretty accurate. Where before, most of the money was concentrated on one region being able to surface talent, that money now has been dispersed over the whole world. And of course, if we look at potential talent, there is statistically much more lurking in 8 billion people than in 50 million. That is simply common sense, unless we assume some racial superiority of Koreans, which could be a tad problematic So to me, it isn't a surprise that the rest of the world was able to catch up after Korea's scene lost revenue. For your analogy: Wouldn't we assume that the ASL player would get a team house as well, if we dropped him in that era? I mean sure, a team house or a well set up training environment are a huge asset... but isn't that one of the exact reasons why Koreans had this unfair advantage over the rest of the world? Big money and structural advantages to build such a multi million dollar machinery that gave them security, training, etc.? To create a hypothetical where you build in this asymmetry seems kind of self-defeating for the argument, no? Given how substantially the advantage of Koreans was, I think it is still pretty impressive what excellent results some non-Koreans had in the peak SC2 era.
Theres a couple of points. 1) The asl player would be at a disadvantage without a team house. So without team houses the current skill level of the scene will always be lower than it could be.
2) Even if you gave the asl player a choice or opportunity to join the team house most of these guys are just older versions of themselves and self admittedly have slowed down physically. Not to mention family/life becomes more pressing as you age.
The asymmetry is the point. The competition hasn't been at the highest possible level for some time. That doesn't mean the players now aren't good etc. they're just playing in a much different environment, one that is clearly at a lower level due to the investment and many other factors.
Like for example if in 200 years club football isn't a thing and academies aren't a thing etc. And the usa plays england/france/spain in the world cup and wins -- I would find that way less impressive than a win against those sides now. Because the thing that made European players good wasn't their inherent genetic advantage, it was the machine that trained them and sorted the cream from the crop.
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On November 18 2025 03:52 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2025 03:30 ejozl wrote:
Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated. It would be different if scene contracted, all the big hitters of an era retired and then Serral became dominant.
You may be onto something. I wonder what happened in 2016 that made most people teamless or retired... oh right it was proleague disbanding and along with it, all pro teams except jin air, who in turn have nobody to compete with.
Here is the list of s-tier tournament winners and runner ups ( S-Tier Tournaments/HotS) during the height of the Kespa teamhouse era, and when they first became either teamless (more than a year) or retired for the first time from sc2. Not counting military service and if they then returned. And of course, many kespa dudes were not able to compete in other non-korean s-tier tournaments as well... so the very few foreigners that did something noteworthy in that time would be likely 0 if they also went abroad.
2013: duckdeok
2014: stephano
2015: yoda, first, flash, revival, snute, oz, san, rain, sora, pigbaby, stardust, heart, forgg
2016: life, leenock, soulkey, innovation, stardust, jaedong, taeja, polt, hyun, MC, bomber, dear, soo, byul, parting, zest, classic, sacsri, sen, mkp, hydra, dark, lilbow
2017: hero, naniwa, dream, curious
2018: mma, snute, jjakji
2020: impact
2021: sos
2024: trap
only maru, herO, solar, scarlett, cure, gumiho, true and mana have not been retired or teamless for longer than a year in that timespan until now.
If I count correctly, there had been 83 pairs of finalists, so 166 finalists. Out of these, non-koreans appeared a grand total of 9 times. Non-koreans only won twice out of 83.
Of all people who were finalists in an s-tier tournament during HotS 2013-15, 38 (out of 56) retired or were teamless for a significant amount of time of over a year already by 2016, 45 (out of 56) by 2018. You would think that retirements would be uniformly distributed in a healthy scene... but they were highly concentrated in 2015/16. And I only count finalists here, not the nonfinalists who make up by far the most people and who would be way more inclined to retire but i dont wanna count it because you guys would dismiss that effort like you always do and return to your usual delusions.
So the creme of the crop, the best players during the most competitive era retired or had a hard time finding a new team in 2016.
For the Lotv era until 2016, we have way more foreigners winning, but this is also when the region lock was implemented in 2015, so basically only violet, true, hydra and polt were allowed to compete.
Average twitch viewership meanwhile went from 5k (August 2017) to now 1k (November 2025) in that post-kespa era. Forget about afreeca viewership for sc2, which was like a dozen guys literally (and it is literally 0 now for months). Given that streaming donations/subs is an indicator whether teams would actually support these players, the support must be declining even faster the past 8 years... and note that already in 2016 most of these guys were having issues finding a team. You think the average korean would want to spend their prime of their life teamless, locked out of most tournaments except for korea, or streaming sc2 for a foreign audience where they get basically no viewers that is declining fast the next years? Do you guys really believe the level of commitment towards sc2 from the most dominating people in SC2 history would be high given that saw no future left for sc2 already in 2016?
Now proceed to call this all overrated evidence and that foreigners somehow being able to compete has nothing to do with the best koreans retiring/having a hard time finding a team in 2015-16.
Honestly, this reeks from desperate non-koreans finally 'winning' in SC2 after being destroyed the first 6 years of SC2, where even the worst koreans were able to dominate in europe/NA after failing hard in korea. Now that koreans did not give a fuck about actually training hard for tournaments the past 10 years as they usually did, instead of calling it as it is, foreigners have deluded themselves the past 10 years that it must be that the level of competition has been actually as high as ever, and that the catchup was all because of talent/effort.
Hilarious.
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On November 18 2025 03:52 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2025 03:30 ejozl wrote:
Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated. But there’s overlap. Serral is playing the people who rose to the top of the pile when there were more full-time competitive pros. So how does that factor in? It would be different if scene contracted, all the big hitters of an era retired and then Serral became dominant. If that had actually happened, you’ve had a lot fewer people anointing him the GOAT I don’t get why you invoke guys like MC who demonstrably couldn’t compete at the same level when Kespa players raised the bar. He had more advantages on his side of the ledger than Serral did breaking through.
Because being the last samurai doesn't mean you're the best samurai, you were the last before the decline, or even while it happened. Of course players just post peak are better than pre-peak from having gained from set peak.
Dingerdonger painted the picture nicely, though very unapologetically.
MC actually travelled everywhere and got top 2, as opposed to other players like MVP who stayed in korea more. It fits better with the number argument. But mc even had a resurgence in 2016, showing he still had the talent, but probably not the motivation to keep hanging around.
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Northern Ireland26489 Posts
On November 18 2025 09:21 doktordingerdonger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2025 03:52 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2025 03:30 ejozl wrote:
Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated. It would be different if scene contracted, all the big hitters of an era retired and then Serral became dominant. You may be onto something. I wonder what happened in 2016 that made most people teamless or retired... oh right it was proleague disbanding and along with it, all pro teams except jin air, who in turn have nobody to compete with. Here is the list of s-tier tournament winners and runner ups ( S-Tier Tournaments/HotS) during the height of the Kespa teamhouse era, and when they first became either teamless (more than a year) or retired for the first time from sc2. Not counting military service and if they then returned. And of course, many kespa dudes were not able to compete in other non-korean s-tier tournaments as well... so the very few foreigners that did something noteworthy in that time would be likely 0 if they also went abroad. 2013: duckdeok 2014: stephano 2015: yoda, first, flash, revival, snute, oz, san, rain, sora, pigbaby, stardust, heart, forgg 2016: life, leenock, soulkey, innovation, stardust, jaedong, taeja, polt, hyun, MC, bomber, dear, soo, byul, parting, zest, classic, sacsri, sen, mkp, hydra, dark, lilbow 2017: hero, naniwa, dream, curious 2018: mma, snute, jjakji 2020: impact 2021: sos 2024: trap only maru, herO, solar, scarlett, cure, gumiho, true and mana have not been retired or teamless for longer than a year in that timespan until now. If I count correctly, there had been 83 pairs of finalists, so 166 finalists. Out of these, non-koreans appeared a grand total of 9 times. Non-koreans only won twice out of 83. Of all people who were finalists in an s-tier tournament during HotS 2013-15, 38 (out of 56) retired or were teamless for a significant amount of time of over a year already by 2016, 45 (out of 56) by 2018. You would think that retirements would be uniformly distributed in a healthy scene... but they were highly concentrated in 2015/16. And I only count finalists here, not the nonfinalists who make up by far the most people and who would be way more inclined to retire but i dont wanna count it because you guys would dismiss that effort like you always do and return to your usual delusions. So the creme of the crop, the best players during the most competitive era retired or had a hard time finding a new team in 2016. For the Lotv era until 2016, we have way more foreigners winning, but this is also when the region lock was implemented in 2015, so basically only violet, true, hydra and polt were allowed to compete. Average twitch viewership meanwhile went from 5k (August 2017) to now 1k (November 2025) in that post-kespa era. Forget about afreeca viewership for sc2, which was like a dozen guys literally (and it is literally 0 now for months). Given that streaming donations/subs is an indicator whether teams would actually support these players, the support must be declining even faster the past 8 years... and note that already in 2016 most of these guys were having issues finding a team. You think the average korean would want to spend their prime of their life teamless, locked out of most tournaments except for korea, or streaming sc2 for a foreign audience where they get basically no viewers that is declining fast the next years? Do you guys really believe the level of commitment towards sc2 from the most dominating people in SC2 history would be high given that saw no future left for sc2 already in 2016? Now proceed to call this all overrated evidence and that foreigners somehow being able to compete has nothing to do with the best koreans retiring/having a hard time finding a team in 2015-16. Honestly, this reeks from desperate non-koreans finally 'winning' in SC2 after being destroyed the first 6 years of SC2, where even the worst koreans were able to dominate in europe/NA after failing hard in korea. Now that koreans did not give a fuck about actually training hard for tournaments the past 10 years as they usually did, instead of calling it as it is, foreigners have deluded themselves the past 10 years that it must be that the level of competition has been actually as high as ever, and that the catchup was all because of talent/effort. Hilarious.
Honestly this reeks of some fetishisation of Korean StarCraft whose honour must be defended at all costs for, some reason.
Region lock did what it was supposed to. Serral, along with Reynor and Clem are also just simply better than the top foreigners before them, which is a factor too. Foreign land was eventually going to produce some monsters, especially given it’s more popular outside of Korea.
Let’s take English football. Suppose the leagues under the Premiership all collapse. That’s going to have an effect on pro footballers, and the game overall. Either very good pros who aren’t quite good enough for the Premier League, or the next generation who may become good enough, but aren’t yet, don’t have a space to ply their trade or develop.
Over time the Premier League would also suffer, but the level would remain high for a time.
The argument for Serral tends not to be (or well, at least mine isn’t) that there wasn’t a decline in the Premier League. But that he got in early enough that it wasn’t a massive one, and his numbers were so bonkers that he’s at least in the GOAT conversation.
Hence why you see a lot less advocacy for Reynor and Clem. Despite their achievements they weren’t as consistently dominant, and some of their big wins are coming further down the line in a period of decline.
Now that koreans did not give a fuck about actually training hard for tournaments the past 10 years as they usually did
Did prize money disappear?
It’s worth also noting that cats like Rain and Inno already had stints on foreign teams, and won things even during the Kespa era. Or you had Byun do his solo miracles. Other non-Kespa players were competitive during that era as well.
I say this every time. If the prize money is still damn solid, and nobody else is practicing, and I’m a progamer, my eyes would light up with dollar signs. I can just practice hard for a bit and dominate. Wouldn’t somebody have done that if that were actually the case?
It somehow manages to be insulting to both Serral and Koreans. Serral that his achievements are devalued, Koreans that they lack professional pride and ambition.
The scene certainly did contract, but it didn’t immediately massively impact the top players straight away, it was the Korean middle class who had previously prospered in other WCS regions. A mix of has-beens or never-quite beens.
A healthy scene needs layers, or it’ll decline over time, as we’ve seen. But minus the odd exploits of a Neeb, at least in 2017 thru 2019 or whatever, it was mostly a Korean hall of fame plus Serral competing at the business end of things.
It’s a pretty different conversation if Serral was just a top European/foreigner, who only started being in the mix for international Premiers by like 2022 or something.
You can almost split the discussion out into two areas.
1. Serral’s GOAT candidacy.
2. The overall health of SC2
On the second, well good news your parent will live! The bad news is we’ll have to amputate a leg, and they’re gonna need an oxygen tank the rest of their life. I think your analysis is pretty on the money here, and I think most here would agree within these hallowed walls.
On the first however, was the decline quick enough to greatly damage Serral’s claim? I’d argue no. His 2018-19 alone was very strong, and we have to remember too that many other legends of the game didn’t stay at the top for much longer than 2-3 years. That it’s more common for longer stretches now I think does indicate the decline of the scene with the next generation not coming through and challenging.
There’s also not really a way to devalue at least some of Serral’s best years without impacting on the claims of others. Rogue made hay, Maru became a prolific winner and went past Inno’s trophy haul, why didn’t Inno win a WC in the easy era? Etc etc
Ultimately it comes down to Serral and a bunch of people who’ll be in SC2’s hall of fame when it’s all over, duking it out. And Serral did pretty well. They were all in direct competition over a sustained period of time. It’s not like we’re comparing LeBron and Michael Jordan, or Wiger Toods and Jack Nicklaus, whose careers didn’t overlap.
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Northern Ireland26489 Posts
On November 18 2025 16:00 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2025 03:52 WombaT wrote:On November 18 2025 03:30 ejozl wrote:
Skill can be everything in this case I'm pretty sure I'm right no matter the definition used here.
Koreans being good lads and trying to keep each other positive and in healthy mindset doesn't mean it's 100% right, same as when they have little thoughts on balance, because they actually want to keep professional.
It's not even that your argumentation isn't on point, but that it seems you are tunnel visioned into this narrative - 8billion ppl vs. 5million, when in reality it's serral being the best of hundreds where MC and others were the best out of thousands.
I have rly high respect for players like snute and naniwa, and of course neeb and serral too. But in the later case the shoe is on the other foot, serral and reynor had huge advantage of both race (in game) and being non-korean meaning they get income advantage.
Btw, if koreans for whatever reason were more gifted, I don't know because of asian fingers or for whatever reason, I think that should be celebrated. But there’s overlap. Serral is playing the people who rose to the top of the pile when there were more full-time competitive pros. So how does that factor in? It would be different if scene contracted, all the big hitters of an era retired and then Serral became dominant. If that had actually happened, you’ve had a lot fewer people anointing him the GOAT I don’t get why you invoke guys like MC who demonstrably couldn’t compete at the same level when Kespa players raised the bar. He had more advantages on his side of the ledger than Serral did breaking through. Because being the last samurai doesn't mean you're the best samurai, you were the last before the decline, or even while it happened. Of course players just post peak are better than pre-peak from having gained from set peak. Dingerdonger painted the picture nicely, though very unapologetically. MC actually travelled everywhere and got top 2, as opposed to other players like MVP who stayed in korea more. It fits better with the number argument. But mc even had a resurgence in 2016, showing he still had the talent, but probably not the motivation to keep hanging around.
MC was one of the top samurai, until a bunch turned up that were better samurais, I mean we saw this happen. The same blokes that Serral didn’t have much issue competing with.
Ofc MC had talent and is a beloved legend of the game. But greatness is doing the thing, whatever that is.
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Stephano said back in 2012.? that there is a guy from Finland that will dominate. It's clear Serral is a GOAT to anyone watching SC2. No one ever dominated as he did/does.
Saying it is easier now makes no sense. Specially if you consider prizes.
And, there is an eye test. Cmon, last World Champ. was something unreal. All of the top games right now are unreal. If you compare them with older eras.
Of course, arguments that best players retired is false. Best players had no problems to find a team or to compete as solo warriors. Jaedong or Flash would never go back to BW if they thought SC2 could bring them more money.
Talents pool is way smaller and with time, scene will die but we can still enjoy best SC2 ever right now and for some more time.
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I don't think it's possible to keep dominating in such a vibrant scene, is the thing. He was still top dog in terms of earning till the collapse of kespa, so he has a great case, imo.
And it's not like It's easy to just show up and dominate, serral played semi pro in hots, that's 10+ years of catching up you'd have to do to enter the big bucks. We saw with parting it took over a year to get to top lvl condition, and he's a former pro.
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EPT
