[Int] oGsTheStC - Message from Korea #4

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In the Korean scene, there are more high level players than the ones you see in GSL. However, we don't often hear about these players due to language barriers. GSL is the premier Starcraft 2 tournament, yet at the end of the day it is only but one tournament in Starcraft 2,

Korean players have been invited to participate in various tournaments with the prize pool ranging from hundreds to thousands. Yet these Koreans are the ones who have set a mark upon GSL and GSTL. We rarely see less prominent players getting featured in the foreigner scene. I aim to change that.

oGsTheStC is a Terran from the Korean team oGs. He was one of the biggest stars back in Beta. Although he hasn't participated in many tournaments as he was serving in the army, he has occasionally participated in online tournaments. Now that he has recently finished his military service, he now restarts his journey as a progamer by preparing for the next GSL qualifiers.

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself and your gaming history in StarCraft 2 so far.
Hello, My name is Choi Yeon Sik of team oGs and I’m a Terran player. Most of my tournament wins are from online tournaments back in Beta and I haven’t been able to enter the GSL as I have been serving in the military. However, even though my service ended this week, I went back to the oGs team house a week earlier because I had 1 week of vacation left and I spent it on last week. Even though I haven’t been able to participate in GSL, I have been able to win 1 FXOpen tournament.

Q. Why did you choose Terran as your race rather than Protoss or Zerg ?
I played Terran since SC1 since I admired (T)

NaDa and

iloveoov. I don’t really have a particular reason that I didn’t choose Protoss and Zerg but I thought that the Reaper was a really cool unit that I often used in Beta so that was probably the reason I kept playing Terran. However as the Reaper speed upgrade was moved to Factory tech, I think there’s very few opportunities to use them. It’s become a pretty useless unit. I heard that the reason they changed the Nitro Pack upgrade to Factory was because of team games. I think that if they had waited a little longer, people would have gotten better at figuring out how to deal with reapers and it wouldn’t have become so unbalanced in team games anymore. It’s disappointing that they changed the reaper so hastily.

Q. Tell us how you got recruited into team Old Generations.
(Z)

TheWinD was my team sunbae (senior player) back when we were on Team STX in SC1. I didn’t do too well in STX though since I went like 3-11 in Proleague. I was so bad back then. When we started playing SC2 in Beta, I was having a really hard time playing on my own. However, he introduced me to oGs. Back then oGs was more of a clan rather than a pro-team. It really helped to improve my skills a lot when I joined. So in the end I guess you can say that he suggested that I should join oGs. Though there were no chat channels back then, there was an option called “add friend,” so we used just regular chat. However, if we were to hold conversations with many people, we would use MSN.

Q. What do you think about life with team oGs now that you’re back in oGs team house?
My teammates are all very fun guys so I’m having a lot of fun here. It is better to play SC2 at the team house rather than by yourself at home because it is a lot easier to exchange opinions on SC2. It also makes you more competitive as you’re around your team all day. I think it’s great being in the team house. In the team house, my roommate is (T)

oGsTOP. He looks and acts very cute. As you saw in the GSTL with oGs vs Startale, he’s a really fun guy. In the team house, he’s threatening everyone’s health with his nunchucks nowadays.

Q. How does your daily schedule change from being in the military to being an oGs player?
I don’t think that much of my schedule has changed. I was an administrative worker in the military so I was spending most of my time in front of a computer anyways. I can’t really tell you my exact practice schedule; however I practice about 10 hours a day. Now that I’m in the team house, I invest 100% of my free time in watching videos of kpop girl groups. When I went and saw Inca play in the GSL Finals recently, I saw T-ara and they were really pretty so I like them the best. However for individual songs, I like SNSD’s “Day by Day.” I think it’s a bright song that fits spring well.

Q. Do you have any rivalries in the progaming scene or in your team?
In oGs, my rival is (T)

TOP since I receive a lot of help from him and we’re really competitive with each other. I don’t really have any rivals outside my team since I haven’t qualified for a GSL yet.

Q. Many people think that Bio is too weak versus Protoss as they die too fast to Protoss AOE. Some have experimented with Mech play as a result. What are your thoughts on these two unit compositions?
I’ve thought about Mech for a long time now and I made lots of builds trying to combine bio and mech. I concluded that it’s hard because Mech is less efficient than Bio. The best Mech usage shown so far has been the Thor-centric build that ThorZain showed in TSL vs MC and Tyler. However the Thor change meant that Templars can now feedback Thors which makes it even tougher. Bio is indeed hard once Protoss gets Templars so I think that Bio and Mech should be combined in the late game. However, I don’t have a good feel on how to incorporate these two yet.

Q. In patch 1.3.2, Infestors received a buff while Ghosts have received a minor buff in 1.3.3. What are your thoughts on these two units in this matchup?
Actually, my teammates and I think that it was a Ghost nerf. You usually see ghosts in TvP where bio is the norm, but bio requires lots of minerals, not gas. Ghosts can now double-EMP a location quickly, which is an obvious fix now that EMP only takes off 100 mana. In TvZ, the Infestor buff will probably make Ghosts a required addition in the standard Marine, Tank, Medivac composition. Before the patch, most Zergs went Mutalisks, Zerglings, and Banelings. But nowadays, Zergs goes Mutas, Zerglings, and Infestors and replacing Banes. I think building Ghosts to counter that is semi-mandatory. Although some chooses to add both Banelings and Infestors instead of Mutalisks, I think Mutas are still standard. In the past you had to snare Marines with Infestors and hit them with Banes. Now that Fungal’s DPS has increased, you can just kill Marines in two casts so replacing Banes with Infestors have now become more popular. If you play with Infestors that way, you can transition to Hive tech naturally, and from there it transitions smoothly into Broodlords. These kinds of Zergs are hard to play against.

Q. As the current season of GSL is now over, how are you going to be preparing for your debut GSL qualifiers and the Seoul LG Cinema qualifiers on June 5th?
Right now my skill level is very far behind so I’m learning from my teammates as they bash me at the same time. I have very poor mechanics, so my team has asked me to work on my mechanics first. I agree with them so I watch my teammate’s replays with the goal of improving my mechanics. I learn a lot from watching (P)

MC,

Zenio,

TOP, and

SuperNoVa’s practice replays.

Q. This year GSL has been making more maps, what do you think about the GSL and ladder maps?
I like them all because all the maps have a clear concept. Bel’Shir Beach got added this GSTL. This map has no Watch Towers and I wish they would make more maps like that. Watch Towers can limit your movement a lot and they give too many advantages to whomever controls the Watch Towers. I think that they force certain locations to become strategically important. Watch towers forces you to fight at certain locations and even if you make a good map, you can’t use the entire map.

My favourite map is Xel’Naga Caverns. As it is a map that has been used for a long time and it doesn’t have any serious imbalances. My least favourite map is Scrap Station. My win-rate on it is very poor and there’s only one attack route so it doesn’t fit my style. I really like to harass and sometimes I focus on harassing so much I miss more important things. I enjoy playing on maps with multiple attack routes.

Q. How much do you know about Teamliquid.net and the foreigner scene?
Honestly I don’t know much about foreign communities outside TL.net. I know that TL.net is the largest foreign community. My English is poor, but TL.net has lots of contents like streams and interviews. I think in that aspect TL.net is ahead of Korean community sites.

As gamers, I think that everyone wants to compete in any and as many tournaments as possible, including myself. I don’t have any particular thoughts on the differences between the Korean and Foreign tournament systems. Personally I would like if there was a centralized tournament in Korea for team league and a wide variety of smaller tournaments outside of Korea for individual competition.

I think that Korean gamers, outside the very elite, are the mass produced mechanics style of gamers. I think that Foreigners have their own unique styles and individuality and the elite amongst them are the ones who have good mechanics. Basically, the average Korean progamers have good mechanics while the top players have good game sense as well. Whereas the average Foreign progamers have good game sense but the top foreigners also have good mechanics.

Q. What do you think about SC2's growth in Korea?
I’m disappointed that it can’t get on popular TV channels. If only they could do that, then I think it would rapidly grow. I’m glad that Blizzard and KeSPA worked things out lately as I hope they can cooperate and help SC2 grow. From a viewer or a player’s perspective, I wish they would hold GSTL over a longer period of time in a full league format. Right now it’s too short because it’s a tournament rather than a league. As a player, it’s such a short period of time to prepare for the matches and as a viewer; a full league would be seem as a true team competition. In conclusion, I think that if they made a full league held over a long period of time, players could practice more and play better quality games.

Q. Any last comment you want to say to TL.net?
Thank you for reading my interview! I’m ending my military service soon so I’ll practice hard and do well in future tournaments. Look forward to it! I’ll really try hard!!

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Credit goes to Waxangel for helping to translate for oGsTheStC

[Int] oGsTheStC - Message from Korea #4

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