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Czech Republic12131 Posts
On June 29 2026 22:34 Creager wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2026 20:45 Poopi wrote:On June 29 2026 20:32 ProTech wrote:On June 29 2026 20:04 Harris1st wrote:On June 29 2026 17:30 ProTech wrote:On June 29 2026 17:20 Agh wrote:On June 29 2026 14:38 ProTech wrote:
LoTV econ created an atmosphere that would typically turn metas into not only a pretty boring playing experience, but also a very very boring viewing experience. Take is pretty useless since it's subjective -- playing there is no impact, however It's hard to argue the viewing experience not suffering as it's not only painfully slow but the build orders are more telegraphed to boot. On June 29 2026 14:38 ProTech wrote:
IMO players were just able to gain too much information, and defenders advantage was way too strong because of the blown up eco, thus creating the situation we had for 11 years. ???. Your reasoning is contradictory. We have almost complete information now since viable opening are more limited in comparison. Throw that on top of the abundant overlord perches, innate hallucination, reaper & worker paths and nobody is getting surprised. I think defending is the easiest it has even been in the history of the game. We have lower unit counts and responsibilities with the ability to fine tailor reactions based on scouting. This is pretty much entirely in direct correlation with reduced worker start. I'd be genuinely curious if anyone else believes that a higher worker somehow makes defending easier. The only thing this patch added was a handful of committed all-ins/cheeses that really only punish openers which are more or less not even viable. Pressuring and harassment builds now generally require much deeper investment (both initial and transition), and the opportunity cost doesn't really align with what players are able to scout and infer in a 16 year old game. I find it pretty amusing how mixed the reactions are to the patch. I personally have always thought the game was too fast, and I think most people share that sentiment on both sides, especially those adamantly for the lower count. Everyone got too lost in the sauce of warpgate and larva changes to play around with the idea of perhaps a fractionally slower game speed or perhaps even a nerf to mining be it speed or value. because everyone is still using LoTV builds, in Wol/hots economy. Everyone is raging, and I'm over here having a blast because I'm using old WoL/HoTS playstyle, and it's working. It won't be until the playerbase figures out how to actually play this eco setting before you really start to understand the ramifications that high eco had on the game. Regardless, there really is no point in complaining about it because the playerbase numbers have it an all-time low, there is no choice but the change the game, if you even want an attempt at restoring its playerbase or esport/twitch viewership numbers. catering to the ragers is probably the absolute worst thing they could do right now, because all the players who used to like starcraft have left. Where are you even getting your numbers from? As far as I can tell, all your number for player base are "trust me bro" to support whatever you are argueing for or against https://nonapa.com/teamsSeason 2 of LoTV was the previous all time low up until a few seasons ago where it had a new all-time low. What's funny about that is that any coherent thinker would be able to discern from those numbers that the worker change was not in anyway accepted by the wol/hots playerbase. It’s very naïve to think that the playerbase shrank because of worker change. If anything, LotV was a better game than WoL/HotS in virtually any patch (yeah tankivacs were silly and fun, much better than late WoL or basically the entire HotS with either swarm host snoozefests, boring mech meta or broken blink stalkers) This is such an arrogant statement to make... If anything, LotV became a faster game, which allowed players to enter the midgame basically instantly for bigger army interactions at an earlier timing, but 'better' is not really the way I'd frame it. I personally prefer slower build-up, turtling and mech. That puts me in a tiny minority, I suppose, but the game allowing me to express my preferred playstyle to a certain degree is objectively speaking a better game, since it gives players more distinct identities. Streamlining everything to the extend LotV did (and still does with some QoL "improvements") makes shit "boring" just the same.
Every god damn expansion got faster than the previous, more harassment options, more options to nuke mineral lines, more AOEs.
SC2 wont get slower and lowering the starting numbers of workers is just a placebo, especially considering casual viewers dont like that. (Winter talked about how he saw improved viewer numbers when his videos started 2minutes into the game(pre-patch))
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9.5 larvae is ridiculous. I did a MOD with 9.0 that they tried, but this MOD has inject and creep tumour costs at 50e, lol. 9.0 is as powerful a mineral sink into larva investment as spending mineral on 1hatch+1queen and having perfect injections, which just goes to show how powerful it is. My idea was to make zerg easier to not have perfect mechanics be as crucial as having to inject twice as often as MULE and Chrono, is a bit imbalanced at least on the macro side. They wanted to just give zerg a bit of a push in the early game, well they certainly achieved that.
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The problem with that logic is that viewership and player base numbers have little to no correlation to whether a game is being played or not.
as a quick example
League of Legends has over 100 million monthly active players.
Average Twitch viewership: about 107,000–114,000 concurrent viewers.
That means roughly 0.1% of the monthly playerbase is watching League on Twitch at any given time, or about 1 Twitch viewer for every 900–1,000 monthly players.
Worlds 2025 average viewership: about 1.53 million, equal to roughly 1.5% of the monthly playerbase.
Worlds 2025 peak viewership: about 6.75 million, equal to roughly 6.75% of the monthly playerbase.
Conclusion: League’s normal Twitch viewership is tiny compared with its actual playerbase, so Twitch viewers are not a reliable way to estimate how many people are actively playing a game.
The same logic can be applied to starcraft and any other game that exists.
While numbers aren't exactly accessible IMO the next best thing you can do is ask AI to scour the web and give its best reasonable guess and here's what it spit back for me for SC2:
Best available estimates for active ranked 1v1 players by StarCraft II expansion:
Wings of Liberty: approximately 450,000–550,000 active players per season
Heart of the Swarm: approximately 200,000–300,000 active players per season
Legacy of the Void today: approximately 95,000–100,000 unique active players in the most recently completed season
A reasonable midpoint estimate would be:
Wings of Liberty: ~500,000
Heart of the Swarm: ~250,000
Legacy of the Void today: ~96,000
These are ranked 1v1 estimates, not total players across campaign, co-op, arcade and custom games. Historical tracking was incomplete, and season lengths varied, so the numbers are not perfectly apples-to-apples.
Based on these estimates, the current ranked 1v1 population is roughly 80% lower than during Wings of Liberty and roughly 60% lower than during Heart of the Swarm.
So assuming this is accurate, the only thing that LoTV did was kill off its playerbase. Same with HoTS
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Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are?
At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid.
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
On June 30 2026 07:44 ZombieGrub wrote:Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are? At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid.
He’s not being disingenuous, he’s just Protech.
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WoL had several aspects of the game that were just not fun or engaging.
Playing an 11 minute game just to have it be over in as little as 5 seconds is quite mentally taxing. (Camera not focused or army, a base, or missed a fractional blip on your minimap for a drop.) It isn't fun for the victor (anti-climatic) or the loser (frustration).
As cool of an idea as forcefields are they are a cancer on the game and dictated what was feasible in map design and also the overall power of gateway units.
Each expansion also introduced things that made the game even more frustrating.
In HotS we got the warhound (you can thank yours truly that is no longer a unit), widow mine, swarm host, and mothership core. All of these units were a giant headache and none promoted back and forth gameplay.
The widow mine is actually the biggest offender, and I'm quite shocked it's still even in the game. I remember Artosis asking people what they thought lead to the game's decline and this unit was firmly #1.
If that wasn't enough we get into LotV and we're met with droppable sieged tanks (lol), liberators, disruptors, and lurkers.
Liberators are the ultimate win more unit, they do little from behind but from an advantaged or defensive position become one of the most insane cost effective and suffocating units.
Disruptors have gone through a myriad supply, cost, damage, and cooldown changes in an attempt to get them in a good state, Always walking the line of useless or overpowered.
Lurkers are in the same boat. The power spike with burrow speed (in combination with range) is probably the largest in the entire game. With both of those upgrades they're too strong, and with nothing they're quite awful units. If sc2 ever gets a giant pass again with a lot of things purged I think adaptive talons is a clear candidate to be on that list.
Even back before they took the older game versions offline I would go back and queue WoL ladder and think to myself that we're actually playing a worse game now.
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On June 30 2026 07:44 ZombieGrub wrote:Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are? At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid.
There are a plethora of reasons as to why the player base has been tanking. I'm not blind to the fact that these numbers are guessing outside of the current LoTV player base numbers.
But what I can tell you is that I have not stopped playing this game for almost 17 years, and LoTV has NOT been fun since day 1, because the economy makes players much better than they should be on average.
I have had more fun in the last 5 days of a low eco setting than I ever had at ANY point in LOTV. The game is more immersive, strategic diversity has been restored, skill expression has been restored, there's nothing to dislike about the game outside of some broken balance changes and bugs.
The main thing people seem to be contesting is that the economy needs to be reverted, and I couldn't disagree more.
And this is largely in part due to forcing the PTR on players, because no one was play testing the game. People on average have not picked up on the fact this isnt LoTV and the LOTV playstyle doesnt work anymore. I will say KR definitely has picked up on this my play experience.
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On June 30 2026 08:01 Agh wrote:
WoL had several aspects of the game that were just not fun or engaging.
Playing an 11 minute game just to have it be over in as little as 5 seconds is quite mentally taxing. (Camera not focused or army, a base, or missed a fractional blip on your minimap for a drop.) It isn't fun for the victor (anti-climatic) or the loser (frustration).
As cool of an idea as forcefields are they are a cancer on the game and dictated what was feasible in map design and also the overall power of gateway units.
Each expansion also introduced things that made the game even more frustrating.
In HotS we got the warhound (you can thank yours truly that is no longer a unit), widow mine, swarm host, and mothership core. All of these units were a giant headache and none promoted back and forth gameplay.
The widow mine is actually the biggest offender, and I'm quite shocked it's still even in the game. I remember Artosis asking people what they thought lead to the game's decline and this unit was firmly #1.
If that wasn't enough we get into LotV and we're met with droppable sieged tanks (lol), liberators, disruptors, and lurkers.
Liberators are the ultimate win more unit, they do little from behind but from an advantaged or defensive position become one of the most insane cost effective and suffocating units.
Disruptors have gone through a myriad supply, cost, damage, and cooldown changes in an attempt to get them in a good state, Always walking the line of useless or overpowered.
Lurkers are in the same boat. The power spike with burrow speed (in combination with range) is probably the largest in the entire game. With both of those upgrades they're too strong, and with nothing they're quite awful units. If sc2 ever gets a giant pass again with a lot of things purged I think adaptive talons is a clear candidate to be on that list.
Even back before they took the older game versions offline I would go back and queue WoL ladder and think to myself that we're actually playing a worse game now.
All of which were brought about due to the high eco environment.
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
On June 30 2026 08:25 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 07:44 ZombieGrub wrote:Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are? At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid. There are a plethora of reasons as to why the player base has been tanking. I'm not blind to the fact that these numbers are guessing outside of the current LoTV player base numbers. But what I can tell you is that I have not stopped playing this game for almost 17 years, and LoTV has NOT been fun since day 1, because the economy makes players much better than they should be on average. I have had more fun in the last 5 days of a low eco setting than I ever had at ANY point in LOTV. The game is more immersive, strategic diversity has been restored, skill expression has been restored, there's nothing to dislike about the game outside of some broken balance changes and bugs. The main thing people seem to be contesting is that the economy needs to be reverted, and I couldn't disagree more. And this is largely in part due to forcing the PTR on players, because no one was play testing the game. People on average have not picked up on the fact this isnt LoTV and the LOTV playstyle doesnt work anymore. I will say KR definitely has picked up on this my play experience.
How does it? If anything the economic pacing makes it harder on Joe or Jane average player because they’re having to manage more, sooner, never mind dealing with the various Legacy new units that trend towards devastating harassment or early busts
Now a ‘better player’ may not necessarily be one with more mechanical chops, but Legacy has pushed things in that direction at least.
For me it’s an illusory patch as it pertains to diversity, it’s just thrown things in flux and that’ll settle down as people optimise and perhaps further tweaks occur.
And it’s wonky to boot, builds don’t flow great in many cases, which they have done in both 6 and 12 worker iterations, 8 worker far as I can tell adds some unintuitive worker cutting etc, which doesn’t feel great to play
I can still remember my WoL openers and little tweaks I liked and that stuff flowed smooth as butter. I had rallied workers just passing my initial pylon for both gate and cyber at basically the exact timing in terms of resources, whack it down and go to mine.
Builds don’t seem to flow neatly with this patch, it’s all a bit wonky IMO.
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On June 30 2026 08:55 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 08:01 Agh wrote:
WoL had several aspects of the game that were just not fun or engaging.
Playing an 11 minute game just to have it be over in as little as 5 seconds is quite mentally taxing. (Camera not focused or army, a base, or missed a fractional blip on your minimap for a drop.) It isn't fun for the victor (anti-climatic) or the loser (frustration).
As cool of an idea as forcefields are they are a cancer on the game and dictated what was feasible in map design and also the overall power of gateway units.
Each expansion also introduced things that made the game even more frustrating.
In HotS we got the warhound (you can thank yours truly that is no longer a unit), widow mine, swarm host, and mothership core. All of these units were a giant headache and none promoted back and forth gameplay.
The widow mine is actually the biggest offender, and I'm quite shocked it's still even in the game. I remember Artosis asking people what they thought lead to the game's decline and this unit was firmly #1.
If that wasn't enough we get into LotV and we're met with droppable sieged tanks (lol), liberators, disruptors, and lurkers.
Liberators are the ultimate win more unit, they do little from behind but from an advantaged or defensive position become one of the most insane cost effective and suffocating units.
Disruptors have gone through a myriad supply, cost, damage, and cooldown changes in an attempt to get them in a good state, Always walking the line of useless or overpowered.
Lurkers are in the same boat. The power spike with burrow speed (in combination with range) is probably the largest in the entire game. With both of those upgrades they're too strong, and with nothing they're quite awful units. If sc2 ever gets a giant pass again with a lot of things purged I think adaptive talons is a clear candidate to be on that list.
Even back before they took the older game versions offline I would go back and queue WoL ladder and think to myself that we're actually playing a worse game now. All of which were brought about due to the high eco environment.
I was actually typing a response, just happened to refresh.
You're quite literally so far in your delusion that you can't see I was referencing original WoL in that pool.
You saved me a minute of my life I wouldn't otherwise get back, thanks.
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
On June 30 2026 08:55 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 08:01 Agh wrote:
WoL had several aspects of the game that were just not fun or engaging.
Playing an 11 minute game just to have it be over in as little as 5 seconds is quite mentally taxing. (Camera not focused or army, a base, or missed a fractional blip on your minimap for a drop.) It isn't fun for the victor (anti-climatic) or the loser (frustration).
As cool of an idea as forcefields are they are a cancer on the game and dictated what was feasible in map design and also the overall power of gateway units.
Each expansion also introduced things that made the game even more frustrating.
In HotS we got the warhound (you can thank yours truly that is no longer a unit), widow mine, swarm host, and mothership core. All of these units were a giant headache and none promoted back and forth gameplay.
The widow mine is actually the biggest offender, and I'm quite shocked it's still even in the game. I remember Artosis asking people what they thought lead to the game's decline and this unit was firmly #1.
If that wasn't enough we get into LotV and we're met with droppable sieged tanks (lol), liberators, disruptors, and lurkers.
Liberators are the ultimate win more unit, they do little from behind but from an advantaged or defensive position become one of the most insane cost effective and suffocating units.
Disruptors have gone through a myriad supply, cost, damage, and cooldown changes in an attempt to get them in a good state, Always walking the line of useless or overpowered.
Lurkers are in the same boat. The power spike with burrow speed (in combination with range) is probably the largest in the entire game. With both of those upgrades they're too strong, and with nothing they're quite awful units. If sc2 ever gets a giant pass again with a lot of things purged I think adaptive talons is a clear candidate to be on that list.
Even back before they took the older game versions offline I would go back and queue WoL ladder and think to myself that we're actually playing a worse game now. All of which were brought about due to the high eco environment.
How are completely units entirely down to the eco changes?
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
On June 30 2026 08:01 Agh wrote:
WoL had several aspects of the game that were just not fun or engaging.
Playing an 11 minute game just to have it be over in as little as 5 seconds is quite mentally taxing. (Camera not focused or army, a base, or missed a fractional blip on your minimap for a drop.) It isn't fun for the victor (anti-climatic) or the loser (frustration).
As cool of an idea as forcefields are they are a cancer on the game and dictated what was feasible in map design and also the overall power of gateway units.
Each expansion also introduced things that made the game even more frustrating.
In HotS we got the warhound (you can thank yours truly that is no longer a unit), widow mine, swarm host, and mothership core. All of these units were a giant headache and none promoted back and forth gameplay.
The widow mine is actually the biggest offender, and I'm quite shocked it's still even in the game. I remember Artosis asking people what they thought lead to the game's decline and this unit was firmly #1.
If that wasn't enough we get into LotV and we're met with droppable sieged tanks (lol), liberators, disruptors, and lurkers.
Liberators are the ultimate win more unit, they do little from behind but from an advantaged or defensive position become one of the most insane cost effective and suffocating units.
Disruptors have gone through a myriad supply, cost, damage, and cooldown changes in an attempt to get them in a good state, Always walking the line of useless or overpowered.
Lurkers are in the same boat. The power spike with burrow speed (in combination with range) is probably the largest in the entire game. With both of those upgrades they're too strong, and with nothing they're quite awful units. If sc2 ever gets a giant pass again with a lot of things purged I think adaptive talons is a clear candidate to be on that list.
Even back before they took the older game versions offline I would go back and queue WoL ladder and think to myself that we're actually playing a worse game now.
Yep. You’ve a lot of tools now, some are just frustrating.
Especially early to mid-game as you’re getting going. And it’s not all Legacy stuff
Boosted mine drops, oracles, adepts or an awkwardly placed liberator can all be pretty devastating
Now add the sheer increased pace of Legacy 12 worker starts and it’s pretty brutal to play. There’s no room to breathe at all.
On the flipside I think the two prior expansions would have been pretty damn brutal if one had all the Legacy tools too. I think you’d ultimately end up with a more chilled first few minutes, and then the brutality of the sheer pace of the modern game even if you adopted a 6 worker start
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On June 30 2026 08:56 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 08:25 ProTech wrote:On June 30 2026 07:44 ZombieGrub wrote:Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are? At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid. There are a plethora of reasons as to why the player base has been tanking. I'm not blind to the fact that these numbers are guessing outside of the current LoTV player base numbers. But what I can tell you is that I have not stopped playing this game for almost 17 years, and LoTV has NOT been fun since day 1, because the economy makes players much better than they should be on average. I have had more fun in the last 5 days of a low eco setting than I ever had at ANY point in LOTV. The game is more immersive, strategic diversity has been restored, skill expression has been restored, there's nothing to dislike about the game outside of some broken balance changes and bugs. The main thing people seem to be contesting is that the economy needs to be reverted, and I couldn't disagree more. And this is largely in part due to forcing the PTR on players, because no one was play testing the game. People on average have not picked up on the fact this isnt LoTV and the LOTV playstyle doesnt work anymore. I will say KR definitely has picked up on this my play experience. How does it? If anything the economic pacing makes it harder on Joe or Jane average player because they’re having to manage more, sooner, never mind dealing with the various Legacy new units that trend towards devastating harassment or early busts Now a ‘better player’ may not necessarily be one with more mechanical chops, but Legacy has pushed things in that direction at least. For me it’s an illusory patch as it pertains to diversity, it’s just thrown things in flux and that’ll settle down as people optimise and perhaps further tweaks occur. And it’s wonky to boot, builds don’t flow great in many cases, which they have done in both 6 and 12 worker iterations, 8 worker far as I can tell adds some unintuitive worker cutting etc, which doesn’t feel great to play I can still remember my WoL openers and little tweaks I liked and that stuff flowed smooth as butter. I had rallied workers just passing my initial pylon for both gate and cyber at basically the exact timing in terms of resources, whack it down and go to mine. Builds don’t seem to flow neatly with this patch, it’s all a bit wonky IMO.
Just based on some investigating I've done, there seems to be a massive correlation between High eco and Foreign StarCraft dominance.
If I look through the game historically speaking going back to 1998, sure there were some foreigners who could compete on occasion with korean starcraft, but up until a high eco setting, koreans have always dominated the game.
IMO this is because the high eco setting actually made the game easier and more accessible to players on average.
I would be VERY curious to see if the current players like Serral clem reynor ETC will have equal amount of success, personally I don't believe it to true, but serral has definetly proven me wrong on many occaisons in the past.
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
Serral and Clem have prospered on account of being mechanical monsters, beyond the level even much of Korea’s best can match on average. And Serral has insane star sense to boot
Decline of the pro scene aside, if the game was easier and more accessible you’d expect more upsets, and more players breaking through to the top level.
Except we see the exact opposite, the top players are more consistent over their peers who aren’t quite on their tier.
All you’re seeing is a pipeline where a game bigger in foreign land saw some of its best talents mature via a region lock that made it a viable career, and some of those talents maturing.
It would be odd if Korea kept dominating in perpetuity given the decline of that scene and SC2 never really being as big as it was in foreign land
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On June 30 2026 09:30 WombaT wrote:
Serral and Clem have prospered on account of being mechanical monsters, beyond the level even much of Korea’s best can match on average. And Serral has insane star sense to boot
Decline of the pro scene aside, if the game was easier and more accessible you’d expect more upsets, and more players breaking through to the top level.
Except we see the exact opposite, the top players are more consistent over their peers who aren’t quite on their tier.
All you’re seeing is a pipeline where a game bigger in foreign land saw some of its best talents mature via a region lock that made it a viable career, and some of those talents maturing.
It would be odd if Korea kept dominating in perpetuity given the decline of that scene and SC2 never really being as big as it was in foreign land
And while you might be right, it doesn't change the fact that Serral was in fact competing heavily during WoL and HoTS with little success, and it wasn't until the high eco changes were he exploded.
I am not making the argument that he isn't able to compete in a low eco setting, all I'm saying that it wasn't for a " lack of trying " in the past iterations of the game.
There seems to be a correlation between high eco and foreign pro player that literally never existed until high eco changes, is what im getting at. In my games alone over the last 17 years I've personally experienced players in past iterations that exploded in high eco that were at no point even master 3 in low eco. This is what prompted me to investigate this in the first place, because I've always been of the mind that high eco is actually newbie compared to low eco.
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Northern Ireland27071 Posts
Wow almost like he was a teenager not playing full time pro or something… soO had already called him as a great talent before LoTV even dropped
In your games? In 17 years? Maybe people got better? Maybe your ceiling isn’t actually that high and you got overtaken?
Maybe strategic divergence got squashed simply because an iteration of the game has existed for over a decade, and much longer than its forebears?
I think your position is overall nonsensical and you seem to be cramming everything into a pre-determined position you’re immovable on
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On June 30 2026 09:59 WombaT wrote:
Wow almost like he was a teenager not playing full time pro or something… soO had already called him as a great talent before LoTV even dropped
In your games? In 17 years? Maybe people got better? Maybe your ceiling isn’t actually that high and you got overtaken?
Maybe strategic divergence got squashed simply because an iteration of the game has existed for over a decade, and much longer than its forebears?
I think your position is overall nonsensical and you seem to be cramming everything into a pre-determined position you’re immovable on
I don't disagree with your statements, I am not saying any of this with conviction and I could absolutely be proven wrong, I just don't think that will come to pass. We are already seeing Korean dominance resurface (albeit doyu is a bit misleading because the larva periodic spawn rate is completely imbalanced IMO)
but what I can tell you as a player who has no race bias as i am a random player, I can very clearly see skill expression returning to the game on average, and it leads me to believe that foreigners are not going to have anywhere near the success that they have been having since high eco.
The only way I see this happening is if we stop seeing the old icon return such as Inno, Trap, soO, etc.
I guess the best way to describe this, is that at some point in pro meta, the game does in fact get figured out. The fact that foreigners are able to compete in a " figured-out meta " speaks volumes to skill expression IMO. Thus making me believe that high eco setting simply made the game easier and more accessible to players on average.
It would be one thing if at any point in starcrafts life span we saw this happen. However the ONLY time that we ever saw this happen was with the high eco changes.
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+ Show Spoiler +On June 30 2026 09:18 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 08:56 WombaT wrote:On June 30 2026 08:25 ProTech wrote:On June 30 2026 07:44 ZombieGrub wrote:Are you responding to me, ProTech? Cause I gave the stats so I'm confused why we're suddenly guessing here. And such BS guessing, too. You compare HotS, from 2015, at 200k-300k to ELEVEN YEARS LATER! LotV, at 96k. Can you not see how disingenuous you are? At least you can agree HotS killed off its playerbase, which had six workers. Arguing that LotV did it after ELEVEN YEARS is just so...stupid. There are a plethora of reasons as to why the player base has been tanking. I'm not blind to the fact that these numbers are guessing outside of the current LoTV player base numbers. But what I can tell you is that I have not stopped playing this game for almost 17 years, and LoTV has NOT been fun since day 1, because the economy makes players much better than they should be on average. I have had more fun in the last 5 days of a low eco setting than I ever had at ANY point in LOTV. The game is more immersive, strategic diversity has been restored, skill expression has been restored, there's nothing to dislike about the game outside of some broken balance changes and bugs. The main thing people seem to be contesting is that the economy needs to be reverted, and I couldn't disagree more. And this is largely in part due to forcing the PTR on players, because no one was play testing the game. People on average have not picked up on the fact this isnt LoTV and the LOTV playstyle doesnt work anymore. I will say KR definitely has picked up on this my play experience. How does it? If anything the economic pacing makes it harder on Joe or Jane average player because they’re having to manage more, sooner, never mind dealing with the various Legacy new units that trend towards devastating harassment or early busts Now a ‘better player’ may not necessarily be one with more mechanical chops, but Legacy has pushed things in that direction at least. For me it’s an illusory patch as it pertains to diversity, it’s just thrown things in flux and that’ll settle down as people optimise and perhaps further tweaks occur. And it’s wonky to boot, builds don’t flow great in many cases, which they have done in both 6 and 12 worker iterations, 8 worker far as I can tell adds some unintuitive worker cutting etc, which doesn’t feel great to play I can still remember my WoL openers and little tweaks I liked and that stuff flowed smooth as butter. I had rallied workers just passing my initial pylon for both gate and cyber at basically the exact timing in terms of resources, whack it down and go to mine. Builds don’t seem to flow neatly with this patch, it’s all a bit wonky IMO. Just based on some investigating I've done, there seems to be a massive correlation between High eco and Foreign StarCraft dominance. If I look through the game historically speaking going back to 1998, sure there were some foreigners who could compete on occasion with korean starcraft, but up until a high eco setting, koreans have always dominated the game. IMO this is because the high eco setting actually made the game easier and more accessible to players on average. I would be VERY curious to see if the current players like Serral clem reynor ETC will have equal amount of success, personally I don't believe it to true, but serral has definetly proven me wrong on many occaisons in the past.
Your inability to consider context is baffling. What ELSE happened in 2015? Something that may have looked to improve foreigner's chances to compete, while limiting Koreans? Maybe something like...region lock? What else happens in 2015? Korean match-fixing! What happened in 2016, the first official year of LotV? LIFE was caught match-fixing! What ELSE happened in 2016, LotV's first official year? Proleague and KeSPA teams disbanded! Naw, it ain't all that that helped the foreigners...it must be the economy.
Since you gave your anecdote, I'll give mine. I've thoroughly enjoyed the 12 worker start and all that LotV had to bring. Boom, negated. Nailed it. Also, to play a game full-time for 11 years as a profession which is notoriously risky (I can say this, I did the same thing) that you don't even like is baffling. You're baffling.
I think WombaT said it best: "I think your position is overall nonsensical and you seem to be cramming everything into a per-determined position you’re immovable on."
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SoCal8930 Posts
On June 30 2026 10:04 ProTech wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2026 09:59 WombaT wrote:
Wow almost like he was a teenager not playing full time pro or something… soO had already called him as a great talent before LoTV even dropped
In your games? In 17 years? Maybe people got better? Maybe your ceiling isn’t actually that high and you got overtaken?
Maybe strategic divergence got squashed simply because an iteration of the game has existed for over a decade, and much longer than its forebears?
I think your position is overall nonsensical and you seem to be cramming everything into a pre-determined position you’re immovable on but what I can tell you as a player who has no race bias as i am a random player, I can very clearly see skill expression returning to the game on average
With all due respect, any time I've tuned into your stream in the last few days, as a terran youve done nothing but 2 rax reaper.
If we cant keep this thread on track, ill go ahead and lock it. There are other places to debate the 12 worker start.
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France12971 Posts
What do you mean asking AI to estimate the playerbase?
I can’t come up with something as bad to do so
The numbers are purely and simply made up
Yesterday tournaments were pretty clear though, it seems that Z>P=T (or >T, but we need more data)
Several results were dubious
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EPT
