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After KESPA players started coming in and dominating everybody, the story was how beneficial the KESPA team house environment was -- constant practice, consistent schedules, playing against teammates, iron sharpens iron, et cetera.
When ByuN won the GSL, it was considered insane that he did it without a team, remember? (I do think people don't give Innovation enough credit for winning a GSL that he came into without a team, and only joined SKT like halfway through.)
Now that KESPA is no more, the only team from that era from that era remaining is Jin Air, so you'd think their players would have a major advantage, but SoS hasn't had really any success outside of this GSL, Maru has fallen off pretty dramatically, Rogue was whisper-quiet until his IEM win, and Cure, Creator, and Trap are nowhere to be found.
Is the team house not as important as we thought? Do ex-KESPA guys know how to practice with each other well enough so that they don't need a team? Are there informal alliances among top Korean pros? Is the system foreign teams use better than we thought? What's the story?
I'm genuinely curious here, so please enlighten me with any info, thoughts, or theories.
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JinAir team has nothing to practice for so i dont think they take it very seriously. It s the leagues like proleague etc where they shine. Also Maru has wrist problems SoS playstyle is just not good in lotv.
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On August 20 2017 01:50 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Do ex-KESPA guys know how to practice with each other well enough so that they don't need a team? Are there informal alliances among top Korean pros? These two are correct.
Nearly all of the top progamers are very close friends, and the ex-KeSPA team bonds are still strong among them (they're all old veterans after all). Because of that, top-tier practice partners are easy to find. The people that have suffered the most are actually the mid-tier Koreans, not the best of the best, because the former lack the experience/friends to maintain their form without the highly structured team environment. Evidence of this is everywhere but most notable in the GSL Ro32.
The best example of the post-KeSPA era is probably ex-SKT. INnoVation, soO, Dark, and Classic are all teamless to this day and yet are nonetheless some of the best players in the world. According to interviews, they still hang out and practice together regularly. INnoVation in particular seems to be doing just fine without a team.
As far as alliances go, all the Telecom players are apparently great friends. The sum of ex-SKT + ex-KT = a Who's Who of current top-tiers.
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Nah jin air players just arent that good. Rogue is good and he won IEM.
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United States1556 Posts
On August 20 2017 02:35 pvsnp wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2017 01:50 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Do ex-KESPA guys know how to practice with each other well enough so that they don't need a team? Are there informal alliances among top Korean pros? These two are correct. Nearly all of the top progamers are very close friends, and the ex-KeSPA team bonds are still strong among them (they're all old veterans after all). Because of that, top-tier practice partners are easy to find. The people that have suffered the most are actually the mid-tier Koreans, not the best of the best, because the former lack the experience/friends to maintain their form without the highly structured team environment. Evidence of this is everywhere but most notable in the GSL Ro32. The best example of the post-KeSPA era is probably ex-SKT. INnoVation, soO, Dark, and Classic are all teamless to this day and yet are nonetheless some of the best players in the world. According to interviews, they are still very close and practice together regularly.
To your point, soO practiced with TY, Maru, INnoVation and more for the finals in Season 2. These guys have been playing for a long time and have expansive networks of potential practice partners. Regarding Jin Air, I've heard that a lot of Jin Air players were focusing on other games at times which would go a long way to explaining their relative lack of results. As far as sOs and Maru go, I think they are pretty much the same players they were last year while Rogue has shown great improvement. I don't think you can take a definitive stance one way or another whether being on a former KeSPA team has impacted their performance at all.
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Bit of a tangent, but you would've thought that top Korean pros being on the same teams as foreigners would bring some more international balance, but we all saw how that went in Ro32/GSL vs. World (Where, again, SoS was the only Korean to lose to a foreigner.)
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There is always a weakest team in anything my man, why are the Browns and the Jaguars the shittiest teams in football pretty much every year despite having top draft picks in 99% of the seasons?
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On August 20 2017 03:25 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Bit of a tangent, but you would've thought that top Korean pros being on the same teams as foreigners would bring some more international balance, but we all saw how that went in Ro32/GSL vs. World (Where, again, SoS was the only Korean to lose to a foreigner.)
Which in fairness... Neeb's PvP has generally been considered literally the best in the world more or less constantly the last year and a half now.
But IDK. Cure/Trap/Rogue are all all of of a sudden playing WAY better than expected of them (in online events). I mean Rogue is genuinely in conversation for the best player atm... It is hard to suggest that Jin Air is actually underpreforming then with those people... It seems more like sOs is just struggling in the current meta.
But yeah. Major is known to practice with the aforementioned TY soO etc and it has shown in his pretty good GSL (and GSLvWorld showings (yes not quite closing the deal, but never looking over-matched)
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JinAir is not in too bad of a spot retrospectively.
Cure is on the rise again and will likely be a contender in 2018 if he keeps it up or goes back to playing Overwatch. Trap if I recall also played Overwatch a lot instead of practicing. Creator hasn't had good results in a long time. sOs as we saw succeeded in GSL last night so he seems to be finding his footing again. Maru has been hit and miss for years. Rogue is an absolute monster right now.
Yes perhaps their results dropped off a little but the team could be coming back very strong.
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Obviously most if not all of the best players have connections among the top players for practising. Even if a top players lacks the connections if they are actually one of the best then it should be easy to secure practise partners since practising together helps both players.
From what I've heard being part of a teamhouse is a hugely important factor to be able to succeed. Not that you have to be apart of it when you win but you have to be part of it at some point to learn how to improve and think in the most effective way.
Teamhouses focued on brood war have through a lot of experience and trial and error ironed out how to get insanely good at rts. What kind of environment and what kind of practise works the best? What is the most important to focus on? How do you plan a series or plan counter builds for a specific opponent. All of this is the specialty of coaches and teamhouses, if you have been apart of that for a long time obviously you have learned most of the most important informaiton.
Sure, the capability to plan together with your team and the added motivation through joint practise is gone when you leave the house but their teachings you take with you. Thats why I think so many teamless pros are doing fine but on the other hand this also means its crazy hard for new players to break into the scenes highest level because they are gated off by knowledge and experience they can learn or replicate (unless teamhouses gets a resurgence).
Edit: Lol didn't even see it was that insanely old thread xD I guess the stars has allingned
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On September 19 2019 15:53 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Well, this aged poorly.
lmao well at least you stuck around to realize the error in your ways :^)
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Quality bump, not even from an adbot. 9.5/10
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Still waiting for Creator and Cure to step it up.
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