Stage fright, pressure to perform or what?
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LUCKY_NOOB
Bulgaria1265 Posts
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Djabanete
United States2783 Posts
I don't think it's all nerves though. There are a lot of mindgames taking place that are hard to follow unless you are a progamer or at least have a lot of experience. I don't speak Korean, but having heard some translated snippets of progamer commentary, I can tell you that the mindgames play a big role. It's difficult to remove yourself from the perspective of the all-knowing observer and inhabit the perspective of a player who can only see one side of the game. As a viewer, try asking yourself: Does Player A know what tech buildings Player B has? What about expansions? What is he most worried about right now? Is he in the dark or does he have a good picture? To add to the point above, in important games, players take big risks. Maybe a player thinks they have a 35% chance to win against Jaedong straight up, so they try something tricky that will win 45% of the time and will look totally stupid 55% of the time. Even if it fails and they look stupid, it was a good idea. Regarding Effort (ASL3 spoilers below), + Show Spoiler + I don't think he did badly at all this season. He played a phenomal game against Sea. He scourged 4/4 dropships and just perfectly destroyed Sea. You could take that level of gameplay to the OSL finals, in my opinion as a long-time viewer. However, he played against Soulkey, and ZvZ is fickle and Soulkey was on point. In particular, Effort tried a sneaky move with lings when he believed that Soulkey's lings were further away than they really were, so that Effort's lings were trapped and killed thanks to Soulkey's good micro. Then Effort went for a big ling attack, which Soulkey deflected so expertly (calculating the exact number of defensive lings/drones that would be needed) that I really can't hold it against Effort that it didn't work. Finally Effort played against an angry Bisu, who played a perfect game. I'd say Effort brought good play but faced incredibly tough opposition in the group of death. As for the overall level of BW dropping, I don't quite see it.*** Maybe many players feel their level dropping, but when Flash was asked about this, he game a more nuanced answer, saying that certain players have gotten rusty but that others have become stronger, too, such as Last, Hero, Shuttle. (I think it was those three.) tl;dr Some players have nerves, for sure. A lot more players, though, are pretty seasoned by this point, and I'd suggest trying to get inside the game more as a viewer and understand the decision making. It makes it a lot more fun, and sometimes bad games turn out to be good games, or at least interesting ones. ***Edit, new paragraph: I've seen progamer interviews where they say they used to have more mechanical skill back in the KeSPA days, and I'll take their word for it. (Apparently Flash said something like "Oh, I just remembered how I used to play Mech TvZ" on stream.) However, I wonder if that's not the whole picture. A lot of these people were in their early 20s before and are in their late 20s now. Humans do a lot of maturing and growing in those years. I would not be surprised if the players are now more well rounded and better at reflecting on the game. Also, these days the progamers spend a lot of time streaming, and a lot of their streaming time is spent hanging out on voice chat and spectating each others' games. I theorize that adding this component of practice could be more beneficial, minute for minute, than simply adding more hours of mass gaming. (Although hours of mass gaming are certainly required.) I'm the same age as a lot of these players, and I was very serious about music in college, even going on to conservatory. I used to be better mechanically than I am now at my instrument, but I know that I could get that all back in a few months if I had to, and overall, having grown over the years, I'm a better musician than I was then. I think there could be something like that going on for people like Flash and Best. | ||
LUCKY_NOOB
Bulgaria1265 Posts
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Jealous
9974 Posts
1. Tournament success is due to more practice ladder matches. However, if a progamer is developing a build, they have to do so off-stream so they don't get countered or make it obvious that they are preparing x for y player. Tournament success yields more stream viewers and thus more money. 2. Non-team ladder practice means that players either a. Have a less stable practice environment, b. More public practice environment due to stream or c. End up practicing against eventual opponents, all of which affect preparation in ways that were not present to this degree in the KeSPA era. This is all keeping in mind that they no longer have coaching geniuses like oov behind them, no regimen forced on them, no sobriety or health maintenance rules. 3. Streaming profits come from streaming obviously. If you are Bisu and participate in a tournament, you have to sacrifice those profits to practice your specific sniper builds in private, by playing seriously and not doing fan service, by taking time off to do tournaments. You are exchanging practically guaranteed average hourly income for one big pay out. In the series of Bisu vs. Effort in 2016 I followed both streams actively. Effort had little fan service, played a lot, and had frequent privacy breaks. Bisu was on stream making faces and noises at the camera with his hands off the keyboard while losing to C rank Zergs, making money. It was then that I knew what the result would be. Taking these three forces and their interplay into account is what makes for the seemingly less stable nature of the matches nowadays (in addition to the coaching and regiment deficit) on top of what was mentioned by Djabanete above. | ||
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