The popular narratives of IPL3 and IPL4 couldn't be more different.
IPL3 was the start of a revolutionary October, where foreigners proved that not only could they compete with Koreans, but that they could win as well. Meanwhile, IPL4 looked like the second coming of MLG Columbus, except worse (a la, Battle.net). Koreans trounced the foreign competition, netting a devastating fifteen of the sixteen top spots. No foreigners made it through the open bracket, seeded foreigners IdrA and White-Ra were rolled, and only Stephano was left behind to pick up the pieces for a respectable tie-5th showing.
In the aftermath, a lot of people have been trying to trace the thread from IPL3 to IPL4, asking 'what went wrong?'. Although the strength and depth of Korean talent has been obvious for a long time, seeing such a vivid demonstrationdrove the point home like never before. The massacre has revived the old protectionist argument of limiting Korean participation in events, and has led to a fair amountof hand wringing in general.
As it should. It's embarrassing to have foreign tournaments result in such skewed prize distribution. Interest is inevitably intertwinedwith the success of foreigners, and it drops off steeply as the foreigners fall. This IPL, while featuring a final with two very skilled and decently well known players in aLive and Squirtle, will probably be somewhat forgotten, simply because so few people held a stake in the final contestants, and because the few Koreans to enjoy massive fan favorite status bit the dust early.
But while what occurred last weekend in Vegas was obviously unfortunate, and should spur foreigners to redouble their efforts, it was completely and totally predictable. The answer to the question 'what went wrong?' is simple: Nothing.
The thing that's wrong is the misplaced frustration and disappointment in the foreign community about this single tournament. The Koreans might have monopolized the top rankings at IPL4, but foreigners didn't underperform – in fact, they probably overperformed. What's truly behind this Korean 'domination' is a rather a silly tournament structure, terrible streaming, short-sighted choice of invites, and simple math.
Why the non-koreans performed so poorly:
The easiest and most obvious reason why the Koreans seemed to dominate IPL4 is that there were so many of them. IPL4 hosted the first GSTL match outside of Korea, and you could say it hosted the first Code S tournament outside of Korea as well. Nine of the twelve group participants were Korean. Those players alone account for eight of the Koreans in the top sixteen. Of the Koreans, only PuMa was invited and finished out of that top group. The other seven Koreans in the top sixteen came from the open bracket, where all eight spots were filled by Koreans. (In this instance, GanZi was the odd man out.)
Meanwhile, the foreign invites to the groups were exceptionally weak. Strong as they might have been when they won IPL's 1 and 2 against middling foreign competition, both IdrA and White-Ra were poor choices for the groupstage. The conceit that the invites were based on previous IPL wins is silly. Both were invited to IPL3, and there could be no reasonable expectation among fans and players that invites to IPL4 would be based on year-old tournaments. Instead, their invited status was obviously a product of their popularity. That's not always a bad thing, and both enjoy huge fanbases in part because they have achieved tremendous success in their careers. But in terms of competitiveness, it was never going to fly. In essence, their invite system essentially locked two foreigners into the 16-20th spots, and ensured only one foreigner would automatically be in play in the top 16.
The salvation of the foreign scene, then, could've been the open bracket. Yet we find the exact same story there. Twenty Koreans on GSTL teams joined the open bracket. Add to that the twelve Koreans on foreign teams, and you have an astonishing thirty two elite Korean players in the mix. It's harder to quantify the number of serious non-Koreans in the open. However, only seventeen foreign players in the open bracket had qualified for an NASL, thirteen had ever even been to Korea for starcraft related reasons, two have a higher TLPD ELO than the current Grubby line, and just one appeared on TL's pre-IPL Power Ranking.
A number of notable foreign names were in action last weekend, but stunningly few were at IPL4. ThorZaIN, LucifroN, MorroW, TitaN, and Grubby were at The Gathering. Kas and Happy were at Copenhagen Games. MaNa was at Gamers Assembly. At home were traditionally strong players like Nerchio and Sen. NaNiwa was practicing for GSL. While there's little doubt that the Korean scene is deeper than the foreign one, it is clear that at IPL4 the Koreans were extremely well represented, and the foreign scene was much less so. With a numbers advantage like this, it's not surprising that all eight pool slots went to Koreans.
There was a lot we missed at IPL4
Why we think the non-koreans performed so poorly:
There's another factor at play here. Sure, the Koreans held a massive edge in numbers and placement in IPL4. But they also held a massive edge in exposure, thanks in large part to IPL's assymetric coverage scheme.
The key factor here is how group centric IPL4 was. Being in the groups gave a massive advantage beyond simply making the prize pool. It also guaranteed two days worth of coverage, and a huge chance of making it on stream. With a groupstage so tilted towards Koreans to begin with, it's little wonder that the perception of Korean domination is so compelling. The same small group of Koreans appeared on stream for all three days, often while beating up on the handful of seeded non-Koreans.
Then there's the matter of the lack of coverage afforded to the open bracket. It couldn't have been plainer that IPL was shocked to discover their open bracket had a level of competition usually associated with Code S. Woefully undermanned, the IPL streaming presentation allowed the entire open bracket to fly straight over most viewer's heads. It was hard to catch a game on the second stream to begin with, and when you did, it was inevitably not the game you'd have liked to watch. In all of the tournament (read: Day 1) only ten games from the open bracket appeared on stream. Moreover, three of them were from the open bracket's first winners or losers first and second rounds, which meant that 40% of the streamed open bracket action was tied up in silly pro vs semi-pro stomps. As the competition actually got better towards the end of the day, the scheduled time for streaming ended and games were played in the dark. SaSe, the final foreigner remaining, was a single series away from making the group stage, but it went almost entirely unknown to the fans at home. While IPL appeared to stick to a rough schedule with the open bracket stream, that schedule seemed woefully inadequate for the incredible amount of talent that could've been covered. Overall, it also injured the case for foreign strength. Only two of the open bracket matches didn't involve a Korean, and they were the first three matches of the day. On stream, the foreigners achieved a 2-4 record against their Korean opposition.
Even more importantly, the day's major stories were largely ignored. This goes beyond simply the foreign narrative, as players like TaeJa, GhostKing, Maru, and Creator, each of whom had an obvious compelling reason to follow, yet never appeared once on stream in the open bracket. But not following every move of Scarlett, who could've been the biggest esports story of the year so far, was tournament malpractice. The effect of knowing Scarlett beat Terious was less than seeing it happen. Similarly, (and more on this in a bit) but Illusion, who put together an absolutely filthy run, wasn't given the light of day.
The sum of this inadequate stream coverage was that the foreigner stories in the open bracket were completely drowned out in the sea of Korean vs Korean group action. Where foreigners were featured, they mostly collapsed. Whatever positive notes there were for foreigners at IPL, simply never made it out to the public watching at home.
But wait, the foreigners still didn't do so well, did they?
At IPL3, which at the time featured the most Korean-heavy line-up the foreign scene had witnessed, it was widely expected that a Korean would take the event. The win by Stephano obscured the fact that the non-koreans got absolutely destroyed in Atlantic City. Only five of the sixteen open bracket qualifers were Korean... because only five Koreans entered. Only three non-Koreans beat Koreans at IPL3, and one of the losing Koreans was Artist, who wasn't living or training in Korea at the time. Six of the top eight were Koreans, and this out of a bracket that featured only 44% Korean participants (14/32). The field wasn't even that good, with MMA being the only remaining player with championship credentials after MC was PvP'd out. The numbers show beyond a doubt that the rough conception of IPL3 as being a foreigner's tournament is made of whole cloth.
Completely the reverse, then, is IPL4. While not a tournament that really knocked the Koreans on their heels, the shallow foreign field actually scored plenty of casualties in Las Vegas. Of course, there's Scarlett, who rocked Terious and nearly pulled an unthinkable upset over Oz. But SaSe deserves credit as well, with wins over Golden and Heart, and only losing to Squirtle and PartinG; results that anyone should be proud of. HuK beat three Code S players in Ryung, HerO, and Virus. And of course, Stephano beat Curious, JYP, and Bomber.
Impressive, right? Now what if neither of these tremendous players was the most impressive foreign player at IPL4?
Did you know that Illusion beat Zenio, lost to Maru, then axed KiWiKaKi, Ryung, and Oz before finally falling to Creator just two rounds from the groupstage? No seriously, how the hell did nobody notice that a 16 year old American beat three Code S players?
The Silent Avenger of IPL4
What was the issue again?
Hidden by the idea of a Korean-dominated IPL4 are these incredible performances. For every Ret or DeMusliM who had a slightly disappointing event, there are the runs of Illusion, Scarlett, SaSe, HuK, and Stephano. Not to mention the close calls, like ToD losing 1-2 to two Code S players, CatZ taking a game off Classic, State off of AcE, BlinG off of AnnYeong, and Caliber from HerO. The truth of IPL4 is, foreigners did just fine, taking games from Code S and Code A level opponents. Only a lack of luck and overwhelming math prevented them from making it to the all important group stage. And if we didn't see these games, then that's the fault of IPL4 for having a poor streaming plan, fans for not being informed, and the media for covering the stories poorly.
Since MLG Columbus, the foreign scene hasn't rebounded as quickly as many hoped, but there's ample evidence that foreigners are at least treading water. More foreigners than ever are practicing in Korea, and the talent produced abroad has done a better job of keeping pace.
Could foreigners do better? Of course. Could HuK or SaSe have made the groups? Yep. Is it odd and disconcerting that ex-pat Koreans continue to overperform and beat top level foreigners? Sure. But the takeaway from IPL4 wasn't that foreigners are losing ground, or that we shouldn't continue to invite Koreans overseas. The takeaway was that if you tilt a tournament heavily in the favor of top Koreans, they'll win it. That's not news. What's news is that two unheralded North Americans claimed four Korean scalps, that two foreign protosses have gone to Korea and become monsters, and that the best representative for the non-korean scene is a mercurial Frenchman American with an effective practice schedule and no fear of the Korean threat.
The views and opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of TeamLiquid.net
Yeah I think it was pretty annoying not seeing what was going on in the open bracket at all. Like you had all these great players and id bet that there were a whole bunch of epic games that were just dropped in the toilet. Like they could have 5 streams and would still miss a load of great matches.
As for the results im really proud of nestea he played very well even with all the pressure to preform because everyone says he is in a massive slump but he is still nestea and I was really rooting for him.
Idra I really don't have a clue any more I just cant put my finger on how he just isn't winning tournment games like he had 1 matchup to prepare for in his group they were all terrans and yet he only takes 2 games out of all the sets. Its just really frustrating to watch because we all know idra is good and all but I just don't know what his preparation but I suppose he should look into improving it.
I think IPL4 went a little as expected as to what was expected from foreigners. I agree with grapeApe above also, that I think many played good games, many very close games, and ofcourse Stephano dominated some top notch Koreans before he got stomped himself by MMA
On April 20 2012 19:44 FlukyS wrote: Yeah I think it was pretty annoying not seeing what was going on in the open bracket at all. Like you had all these great players and id bet that there were a whole bunch of epic games that were just dropped in the toilet. Like they could have 5 streams and would still miss a load of great matches.
As for the results im really proud of nestea he played very well even with all the pressure to preform because everyone says he is in a massive slump but he is still nestea and I was really rooting for him.
Idra I really don't have a clue any more I just cant put my finger on how he just isn't winning tournment games like he had 1 matchup to prepare for in his group they were all terrans and yet he only takes 2 games out of all the sets. Its just really frustrating to watch because we all know idra is good and all but I just don't know what his preparation but I suppose he should look into improving it.
idra has had a terrible year so far. He has good mechanics I think or at least good APM but sometimes it seems strategically he might be missing something the korean zergs have or maybe it is just the cheeses nailing him. But until he gets over his mental issue I doubt he will compete with the top players. He COULD and has potential but not till then will he win anything..
So much talk about what everyone missed but no one casted the games and HAVE YET to even release the REPLAYS and have no reponded to anyone about releasing them im never buying a subsccription from them again.
I am so glad this article came out. I had the same feeling, it ripped my heart, and i wanted the world to know. And about the streaming... lets hope tournaments show A LOT more from the open bracket. There's so much story and fun in there...
This event in my eyes was pretty meh, no foreigners streamed except those that we all know, can't compete with koreans, outside of Stephano.
Also the finals, I didn't really end up caring to much, as to me aLive is a very boring player, and Squirtle, who really knows anything about that guy?
I wish I could of watched some of the games from people in the group stages aswell, I don't believe Curious who was in Group B got a single one of his games streamed.
One thing I never quite understood was why MMA, MC and NesTea got direct invites? why not get some top EU guys aswell?
Yeah, I really did not care about IPL4 and did not watch much of it as a result. If I want to see the Korean top players against one and other I have GSL. What I want to see is the interesting games where none-koreans play against Koreans. Even if they lose, the better once will still take a game here and there and play fairly close series. That is exiting and a good reason to watch.
Personally, I don't think that a few Bo3 upsets count towards foreigners doing passibly well. If we have sunk down to that level, then it is bad prospects indeed.
As things are right now, I am still inclined to go with what Liquid`Taeja said about this while at the Assembly winter tournament couple of months ago: "Koreans understand RTS better, therefore the korean ladder is better, but amongst progamers there is no difference". Is it a startling thing to hear from someone who really knows? Not really. We have for a long time known that the foreigners are competitive.
I do agree we need more lower key tournaments to help new foreigner talent compete for attention, but limiting korean participation for the main-event tournaments like IPL would be utterly foolish.
What we need is for the foreign grass roots to grow and produce more excellent players, for the ladders to get better and, for the west to learn to play RTS in general. Let's face it, we really are new to it, and we will need time until your normal western ladder player thinks about the game as productively as korean ladder players.
With a stacked open bracket as it was. I really wished IPL would have devoted an entire day to this part of the tournament. then moving to the group stage and the schedule as it was.
Also, why do American people claim Stephano is American ? Can't stand a French guy steam rollin' ?
Well, what I don't understand is why so many tournaments resort to "pool play". A simple k.o. system would be more interesting for me. Give some fan favorites a buy in the first 2-3 rounds and make it a 256 player bracket. Right now, the interesting part is the open bracket.
I knew of Illusions run, but only through my own research and the LR thread, the coverage of the open bracket was pretty terrible and I think IPL can learn a thing or two from MLG in that regard who have recently stepped up their game in the StarCraft coverage across multiple streams, with a number of casters covering some notable open bracket games.
Maybe something like a tournament intern newsflash for open bracket games, between the "regular" games, would be a good idea. To spotlight good games, upsets or what ever could be intressting.
We should have one of these after each tournament to at least partially "counter" swarms of people who will form an opinion based on limited information and superficial observation (often with a touch of personal bias on top).
On April 20 2012 20:09 Hiea wrote: This event in my eyes was pretty meh, no foreigners streamed except those that we all know, can't compete with koreans, outside of Stephano.
Also the finals, I didn't really end up caring to much, as to me aLive is a very boring player, and Squirtle, who really knows anything about that guy?
I wish I could of watched some of the games from people in the group stages aswell, I don't believe Curious who was in Group B got a single one of his games streamed.
One thing I never quite understood was why MMA, MC and NesTea got direct invites? why not get some top EU guys aswell?
Squirtle is a motherfucking badass
The dude has a 70% win rate in PvZ and 75% win rate in PvP IN KOREA He will play his ro16 matches in GSL next thursday, with 2 other protosses in his group. You should check it out
yea, who is this guy?! Educate yourself fool
also: Top EU guys do not compare to MMA, MC and Nestea (except stephano who was there, and naniwa who probably could've been there if he wanted)
Nice article to read, and i do agree, IPL gave us great games and a taste of korea's deep player pool. Where foreigners like Illusion slipped under the radar a bit by all the Korean foreigner bashing going on that weekend. I also fully agree players like White-Ra and Idra should not be seeded, IPL changed so much and how can you justify 1 year old results.
IPL4 had two streams, of which only one was properly utilized over the course of the tournament. Having an open bracket like that would have needed four streams to at least cover a good deal of the more interesting matches. Be that as it may, if you do have two streams, then continually do show games on both. The way they did it (second stream on hour-long same-ad loops etc.) you essentially only had 1.5 streams.
Whoever picked the matches being broadcasted from the open bracket needs to touch base with the community again. There were some very questionable decisions while their own LR thread screamed the matches the audience actually wanted to see. Also, to end the tournament day and shut down streaming while even foreigners or foreign-team Koreans (SaSe, Taeja, etc.) were still fighting to win their Open Losers Bracket on Day 1, was really a bad decision and left a bitter aftertaste.
Let's hope at IPL5 in August, again in Las Vegas, and combined with the GSL finals this time, things will improve, as the open bracket will also not be swamped by two full GSTL teams from Korea.
Illusion is a fantastic player, I follow his streams reguarily so I wasn't that surprised to see his amazing run thru IPL4. Give credit where it's due, this kid is AWESOME! Illusion fighting!
On April 20 2012 20:47 torm3ntin wrote: Not streaming foreigner games doesn't mean we did well. Math tells the truth there.
Did you read the article or just picked a random sentence inside it in order to make that comment. Not gonna explain you how wrong you are since the article explains it though.
Anyway thx for this article, very interesting, Illusion's run pretty much seemed invisible during the tournament, great to see some more NA players bringing good results. And as always, gogogo team France, Stephano is the beast and with his next trip to Korea, I hope we see him competing in the GSL to finally shut all the mouths saying his playstyle or lvl in general aren't code S quality.
i believe IGN releasing all of the replays from IPL4 is the best solution. we can watch our favorite players and their games, even though they are not casted, we get to see how well they performed.
I totally agree with this article, mad respect to TL! People get way too hyped up at foreigners losing in a tournament where there were actually so many more koreans of 'solid pro' status or better than there were foreigners. Put 16 of the top foreigners and 16 top koreans into a 32 man draw and look at the placings in that, and then decide on how well the foreign scene is doing in terms of top tier play.
Its time for the scene to stop inviting popular players anymore. The only player who did well in the groups was Stephano and he actually qualified by winning IPL 4 UK qualifier over Tails/Sase/Ryung
Also Scarlet won a qualify tournament and she did very well also. Illusion are the ode one out he didnt win any qualifiers or anything but he had massive succes. But not really supricing since im considering him the best NA player atm. But he dont get much love from the community but it is hard to keep up with Idra that got a million fans an are exstremely overhyped.
Feast is another example he dint play IPL4 but he is one of the few foreigners who has done very well recently and beat several top dogs. And how did he do it? He qualified to IEM
I think the lesson we need to learn as a community are stop inviting the oldschool overhyped players and lat the players qualify. Trust me the foreign scene will do much better
On the topic of (possibly) lacking open bracket coverage: I think the problem is rather that the tournament is too big to be covered. I mean, GSL is a much much much smaller tournament player-wise, but they still manage to produce content for several hours 5 days a week for like 1.5 months. With open brackets of 100+ players and double elimination brackets which increases the amount of games massively, its just not possible to cover. Tournaments have evolved into running first 2, the 3 or 4, and now up to 6 streams at once, but even then its not enough. And the solution is hardly to run 15 streams, there comes a point when its too many and I think we're about to reach that point already.
Im not saying the solution would be smaller tournaments though. Having an open bracket is good for many reasons. Im just saying that you cant really expect a very well covered tournaments when its being played in 3 days and consists of a simply massive amount of games and possible storylines. You probably have to choose one or the other, and IPL chose the large format.
I do agree that foreigners performed better than many try to make it look though, that part was well written.
A great article, nice job, but the most important part of it is Illusion being a motherfucking Slayers destroying monster, and getting pretty much ignored for the whole weekend, he deserves the attention he's getting in this article, and then some.
On April 20 2012 20:57 Kreb wrote: On the topic of (possibly) lacking open bracket coverage: I think the problem is rather that the tournament is too big to be covered. I mean, GSL is a much much much smaller tournament player-wise, but they still manage to produce content for several hours 5 days a week for like 1.5 months. With open brackets of 100+ players and double elimination brackets which increases the amount of games massively, its just not possible to cover. Tournaments have evolved into running first 2, the 3 or 4, and now up to 6 streams at once, but even then its not enough. And the solution is hardly to run 15 streams, there comes a point when its too many and I think we're about to reach that point already.
Im not saying the solution would be smaller tournaments though. Having an open bracket is good for many reasons. Im just saying that you cant really expect a very well covered tournaments when its being played in 3 days and consists of a simply massive amount of games and possible storylines. You probably have to choose one or the other, and IPL chose the large format.
I do agree that foreigners performed better than many try to make it look though, that part was well written.
Its doable by other tournaments. Have one stream (even with community casters) stream cover only the open bracket - they would only need to work well with the open bracket tournament admin so they could select some good matches.
On April 20 2012 20:48 Lysanias wrote: Nice article to read, and i do agree, IPL gave us great games and a taste of korea's deep player pool. Where foreigners like Illusion slipped under the radar a bit by all the Korean foreigner bashing going on that weekend. I also fully agree players like White-Ra and Idra should not be seeded, IPL changed so much and how can you justify 1 year old results.
I mean of foreigners who could really defend a Seed you really only have Nani, Stephano and Huk.
Sase and Thorzain get honorable mentions but our bench of S/A class talent isn't too deep.
I do not mind koreans competing in international tournaments but the amount of koreans flewn to Las Vegas by IPL (because I guess they were the ones paying for GSTL to be played there) combined with the poorly designed group stage made my experience as a viewer quite lackluster.
I also find many korean players hard to like (as a fan) because very few of them speak english, hard to catch streaming and when they do it is all in korean for most of them and in interviews they say quite boring stuff.
I agree that there were a lot of important matches that did not get shown. But as far as foreigners catching up? Not really. Illusion and Scarlet did well because they are still young and have natural talent - these are the types of players (if resided in Korea) Korean teams seek out, then among those find ones who can practice hard and improve. We are too focused on our old guard, on well known names, ect. We have a much larger player base right here in NA, but we don't have people scouting for raw talent, and we don't give players any reason to show raw talent, and when and if we actually find it, we don't know what in the fuck to do with it. The usual method I've seen is 1. Lets take a self motivated ladder hero and put a Team Logo on his shirt or send him to Korea or a team house. 2. Let's recruit this guy, he has a popularity base in X scene, played broodwar and maybe has some small tourney wins. The number 3, which we should see, but rarely do, are players/coaches scouting players, teams creating incentives to be scouted, and then, low and behold, create a structured place where these little chobos can be molded into gosus, with the help of their co-aspiring teammates and coaches. When that shit happens, we'll have good foreign players. Until then, we'll have a lot of talking heads, a lot of randoms with a hell of a lot of natural talent but no support to grow it, and a continuing need to fill the gaps in our rosters with Koreans who have already been recognized for their talent, molded by their support system, and come out a lot stronger because of it.
First of all, this stupid white dude vs asian dude argument is really tired and stupid, and people should start realizing that its hurting the growth of esports to constantly be discussing it even at events (casters) cheering on the "Foreigners", it just comes off as racist. I realize its a BW thing, but the world has become a great deal more interconnected since then, and that argument really has no place anymore, especially with the results of Sc2. If you are a fan of sc2 you should want to see the top level play, from WHOEVER is playing it.
I think its great VileIllusion did well, and maybe he should have been recognized on a stream for that, as should any lesser known player who is moving up and showing top level skill...but IGN is looking for $$$ and views. Who do you think they would rather broadcast? Nestea/MKP or VileIllusion. At an event where sc2 was getting demolished by LoL tournament ( sad day ), i don't think they would want to start taking chances on tuning out their biggest crowd draws.
I apologize that this may seem kind of harsh, but TL really has doubled down on the White dude vs asian dude storyline/arguments lately, and when Sc2 is already losing a LITTLE ground to other games, this type of resentment is really hurting rather than helping.
Nice recap and a fresh perspective on the tournament. IPL 4 unfortunately dropped the ball on the coverage bit, but redeemed themselves somewhat with a nice final day without technical issues. Hopefully when IPL 5 rolls around they will have learned the lesson of showing important deciding group-matches, to not have a gigantic bracket filled with excellent players without coverage and to not let a spectacle (although the GSTL-final was nice) put the coverage of their own tournament on the back-burner.
Ok, IPL did some mistakes with the stream and so but it certainly doesn't deserve this :
"What's truly behind this Korean 'domination' is a rather a silly tournament structure, terrible streaming, short-sighted choice of invites, and simple math."
I know that MLG begins in a few hours but still ... Btw, still no DreamHack thread ! More bias plz !
No offense, but when we start considering foreigner performances good when they win a couple BO3s, then its starting to get really bad. They may have been performing well relative to other tournaments, but that doesn't mean they were good overall.
Perhaps Open bracket should have so called "Streaming checkpoints". Rules states that (needs to different languages enough that everybody understands) admin gives permission to continue bracket until next checkpoint. Those checkpoints are handpicked to predict possible good match beforehand and updated while tournament goes on. This way better matches are shown more often and non liked matches gets taken out. Tournament might get little bit slower but...
This is such a brilliant article. I hope IPL and other tournaments read it and learn from it, because there is so much valuable info in here.
We're going to try and do more opinion articles in the future. It might be there will be some disagreement over the content occasionally, but regardless we consider it a positive development to put articles like this out there.
I never understood why people cared so much about foreigners. I'm happy they had great players, full stop. No one cared in BW that there hadn't been a relevant foreigner in years, why is it a big deal here? I just wanna see great play
On April 20 2012 21:29 Irre wrote: If you are a fan of sc2 you should want to see the top level play, from WHOEVER is playing it.
Don't be silly. You support your home teams. Back when I followed football I supported my local football team, not because they're the best (and believe me they weren't), but because they were local. Because they were from where I was from.
wow, i thought ipl4 was a rly bad tournament as far as organisation and streaming goes. and finally some true words here! and not just the usual, "best event ever blablablabla"
Really well-crafted and constructive article, I have to completely agree. For the stories of Scarlett and Illusion to not get coverage on stream is totally unacceptable.
Would definitely like to see more opinion pieces like this in the future, well done!
Altho pretty old, that gif never fails to make me ROFL
@Article...yea i fully agree. It was like watching an English-dubbed GSL. That's why i even got borred watching it to be honest. Even if the games were amazing, having seen a very small amount of foreigners made it very dull. Part of the competition beauty is Foreigners vs Koreans. If u show just Koreans u literally show half the competition.
Regarding the stream: I don't see why it's so difficult to jump in and out of matches selecting whichever player is in great form to show on stream. I can understand why they have to have a running order for the main stage but on the secondary stream things should be much more fluid and not just simply selecting the biggest names.
I can also understand people simply replying "just want to see the best play" but that's what the primary stream is for, events should take advantage of secondary streams to show more of the field. After all if you just want to see the best then watch the primary stream, it shouldn't bother you what is on the secondary streams because you can't properly watch both at the same time.
Also I don't think there should be any limit or restrictions on who can enter a tournament, maybe region locked qualifiers for group stage depending on the tournament, but in the case of an open bracket the organisers should not arbitrarily spread them throughout the bracket, literally seeding them, which is completely unfair. Random or maybe even have a separate open bracket, which is more extreme and is probably as bad in practice as filtering them throughout the entire open bracket.
This really helps to put IPL 4 in perspective for the foreign tournament. I knew the production, game choice and other details were being handled very poorly as I watching it, but I didn't realize exactly how much it was affecting the perception of the tournament. I got the sense that IPL was understaffed in some key areas, it was reflected in their failure to be on top of the developing storylines and take advantage of them.
I'm looking forward to seeing more opinion articles that help present a new thoughtful perspective.
As a viewer, I was happy to see such high level games, but it got stale seeing the same people come up over and over again. I would have preferred to see more of the open bracket, but I think they were severely limited by only having two streams. I was paying pretty close attention to the open bracket via liquipedia, so I was actually pretty aware of the foreigner success throughout the tourney. It is, however, inexcusable for the organizers of the event, knowing full-well that a majority of people want to see foreigners play, to ignore their viewers' desires and stay fixed to a rigid streaming schedule.
On April 20 2012 21:29 Irre wrote: If you are a fan of sc2 you should want to see the top level play, from WHOEVER is playing it.
Don't be silly. You support your home teams. Back when I followed football I supported my local football team, not because they're the best (and believe me they weren't), but because they were local. Because they were from where I was from.
I see what you mean, but I don't think it can work out that way for SC2 in the U.S. There aren't local Starcraft teams as in sports--there are only a few well-known American SC2 players and this is a continent-sized country. There's no real opportunity to see famous players locally unless a major tournament happens to be scheduled in your city.
Funny how Scarlett beats 2 players and gets a 130+ page fanclub, while people like Illusion or Ostojiy (who beat Golden and Puma in Bo3s at MLG) go largely unnoticed.
The problem is that people will not watch games on a lower level than they are used to. If MLG would start limiting the koreans only a few games would be really exciting (Korea vs. Korea/Stephano/Huk/Naniwa) and the rest would be some foreigner getting rolled by koreans or two foreigners which just produce lesser games.
The only way out is in my opinion: Foreigners, get better. I don´t care how, just do it. The koreans are not more intelligent than you.
Actually I have to admit that I hardly give a shit about the nationality of the players.
On April 20 2012 21:29 Irre wrote: If you are a fan of sc2 you should want to see the top level play, from WHOEVER is playing it.
Don't be silly. You support your home teams. Back when I followed football I supported my local football team, not because they're the best (and believe me they weren't), but because they were local. Because they were from where I was from.
You do not be silly, not everyone thinks like that. i personally would like to see all of the best players play and sorry to us Foreigners but we know that the Koreans are way better. This article is so wrong, want to know why? 2011 MLG Columbus - 7Koreans 17 Foreigners MMA won, top 4 3koreans 1 foreigner 2011 MLG Anaheim - 8 Koreans 16 Foreigners MVP won, top 4 koreans 2011 MLG Raleigh - 9 Koreans 13 Foreigners Bomber won, top 4 koreans
Finally Huk wins MLG then what? Koreans have won. I took MLG as an example because it is the only tournament where the really good Code S Koreans go to and it has a good mixture of Foreigners and Korean Code S players. At the time of IPL 3, only MC and MMA were Code S players that were in that tournament. But did they lose to a foreigner? NO! They lost to Koreans to get knocked out. MMA by Puma and MC by Inori.
Please people do not act like if the tournament is equal in Koreans and Foreigners, that some how the Koreans are going to start playing badly and the Foreigner are going to become Gods of SC2 and win. NO, again. Foreigners need to step it up and get on the Koreans level because now we only have, what? Nawiwa, Huk, and Stephano..sad but true.
Nicely written and truly spoken. Maybe it was because it was getting late in Finland at the time the last foreigner dropped out of the tournament, but that was when I stopped watching it live. If Stephano would have been able to go through the lower bracket, I'm sure I would have followed it all the way. Now I just watched the vods linstead.
Koreans are awesome to watch and they deserve the spotlight usually, but in IPL4 there might have been just a bit too much of Korean action for my taste.
Don't know if I agree 100% with this article but it surely provides some interesting food for thoughts...
On April 20 2012 20:54 Benjamin99 wrote: Excellent post and I agree with most of it.
Its time for the scene to stop inviting popular players anymore. The only player who did well in the groups was Stephano and he actually qualified by winning IPL 4 UK qualifier over Tails/Sase/Ryung
Also Scarlet won a qualify tournament and she did very well also. Illusion are the ode one out he didnt win any qualifiers or anything but he had massive succes. But not really supricing since im considering him the best NA player atm. But he dont get much love from the community but it is hard to keep up with Idra that got a million fans an are exstremely overhyped.
Feast is another example he dint play IPL4 but he is one of the few foreigners who has done very well recently and beat several top dogs. And how did he do it? He qualified to IEM
I think the lesson we need to learn as a community are stop inviting the oldschool overhyped players and lat the players qualify. Trust me the foreign scene will do much better
This is a point I'll never stress enough. Tournaments keep inviting people who have not the skill / the need to win solely because they are from the very first hour or because they have a funny stream channel. Everytime this big names fail, and everytime they are invited back.
Liquid`Nazgul Administrator April 20 2012 21:44 We're going to try and do more opinion articles in the future. It might be there will be some disagreement over the content occasionally, but regardless we consider it a positive development to put articles like this out there.
I also agree with Nazgul, it seems a cool idea. As long as the articles do present their ideas without deliberately sounding offensive (cough cough a certain elephant cough) I don't see any bad. Actually I think that IPL should read this one and benefit from it.
Good read, I think IPL 5 should do regional qualifers to ensure more foreign players get into pools. Idra, white ra and stephano. But at the same time, its kinda hard to not see a korean when this since there were so many. This tournament was about as hard as code S tournament.
Hmm.. To me, IPL4 was a good tournament, i was following alive very closely recently because he did great in other tournaments before and i was so happy to see him wins it ! I don't care if i see only koreans in the top 16, i'm here to watch some starcraft action and to root for my favorite players. I"m rooting for _a lot_ of people, foreigners and koreans. If they all had the same chances to make it, then i feel bad for my foreigners favorites but it's the game, i accept it and i'm happy for whoever wins. But i agree that the open bracket did not recieve a great coverage, my only source of information was liquipedia and i would have loved to watch more games from it. I agree that foreigners and koreans didn't have a good ratio but i strongly disagree if you suggest that we should make ratios. Everyone should be able to participate, especially in open brackets, whatever the nationality. Then the best man wins and that's how we should play a game imo.
It was a nice read anyway. I wouldn't be so harsh on them but i agree with the stream part. Less for the other stuff but we all have our opinions
Great article, IPL had an awful tournament system that killed most of my interest on day1 in unaired games, thanks for highlighting that. MLG seems to be a bit better in this regard now that their seeding system got reworked.
that schedule seemed woefully inadequate for the incredible amount of talent that could've been covered
talent is relative. If you compare it to the average SCII player every game should have been covered due to the huge "talent". As a matter of fact though although Sase did not do bad he did not do very good either. The "talented" (=hard working?) players are the koreans. That is why they win all the time.
I am so sick of this foreigner-korean comparision all the time.
I find open bracket coverage to be lacking in most major tournaments
Since foreign interest is tied to foreigners, why not have a dedicated steam for good open bracket games?
Additionally, one thing that current tournaments are lacking is good, concurrent analysis. Most of the time I have to keep a TL thread open just to get news on what I'm missing!
On April 20 2012 21:29 Irre wrote: If you are a fan of sc2 you should want to see the top level play, from WHOEVER is playing it.
Don't be silly. You support your home teams. Back when I followed football I supported my local football team, not because they're the best (and believe me they weren't), but because they were local. Because they were from where I was from.
I see what you mean, but I don't think it can work out that way for SC2 in the U.S. There aren't local Starcraft teams as in sports--there are only a few well-known American SC2 players and this is a continent-sized country. There's no real opportunity to see famous players locally unless a major tournament happens to be scheduled in your city.
Because people aren't really enthusiastic about cheering on their own country in the olympics or anything, right? Local doesn't have to mean down the street from you, and you don't need to personally meet the competitors to still be excited about them. Most people will have seen their favourite sports teams maybe once a year, and even then it will be in a large city that is on average an hour or two away from them. They'll almost certainly never meet any of the players. Its really not so different.
Yes it was pretty annoying, i am watching the tourneys, because i want to see foreigners beat korans. This was practically just another GSL with stephano instead of naniwa. (because of the open bracket coverage was missing) So eventhough the organisation and everything was stellar, i personally didnt really enjoy this event
On April 20 2012 21:49 bbm wrote: Don't be silly. You support your home teams. Back when I followed football I supported my local football team, not because they're the best (and believe me they weren't), but because they were local. Because they were from where I was from.
I get what you want to point out, but I'm of a different opinion for three reasons:
1) watching your favourite local football team VS Barcelona might be cool the first time, then it slowly becomes an appointment with your National Health Dentist: painful and predictable. I'd rather watch my favourite (and why not? Bad. It's not like not being on top is a crime) team play with someone more evenly skilled.
2) personally I don't care about the nationality of the players, rather about the quality of the game.
3) it's not like you cannot support these players in other way, like watching their stream and so on! There are also showmatches and things like that.
Let's face it: there are some famous players out there who have never achieved anything since the beta, yet they are most likely earning more money than some skilled koreans and foreign colleagues due to contracts and so on. It's not a bad thing in itself, they are skilled with PR, merchandise and so on and deserve respect for that. But there's nothing that makes me rage more than seeing these guys being invited again and again because "hey! It's X, he's so cool!" while there are way more deserving players that maybe won't go 0/5 in a group of 5 like predicted.
I did notice Illusion had a great run and thought there should be more hype around it. However, media (casters and written news) seemed to ignore it since he didn't make it into groups.
It is first casters and then news writers that should bring those stories up .
If i were a european "pro" i would think 2 times about traveling to a tournament packed with code S players and nealy a chance of 0,01% to win or get some money o.O and thats what actually many european pros think. why should they do a stressfull and expensive trip without a chance of any profit by playing against over a dozen of koreans...
Thank you for spotlighting Illusion, he was monstrous that event. I kept wondering "when is this guy going to lose?" Very well written TL, and wp illusion!
I think it's a bit silly for TL to criticize IPL for seeding White-Ra and IdrA when TSL seeded players who won a similar tournament in a different game. -.-
On April 20 2012 22:55 lowkontrast wrote: I think it's a bit silly for TL to criticize IPL for seeding White-Ra and IdrA when TSL seeded players who won a similar tournament in a different game. -.-
afaik, tree.hugger bothers the TSL staff all the time to stop seeding/inviting people
On April 20 2012 22:55 lowkontrast wrote: I think it's a bit silly for TL to criticize IPL for seeding White-Ra and IdrA when TSL seeded players who won a similar tournament in a different game. -.-
Did you miss this part?
The views and opinions of the author do not necessarily represent the opinions of TeamLiquid.net
so basically It's just treehuggers' thoughts.
TSL cannot even be compared to IPL it was a year ago and a totally different type of tournament too.
FUCKING NINAJ'D with an even better answer gtfo waxangel
We're going to try and do more opinion articles in the future. It might be there will be some disagreement over the content occasionally, but regardless we consider it a positive development to put articles like this out there.
On April 20 2012 20:19 Micket wrote: Personally, I don't think that a few Bo3 upsets count towards foreigners doing passibly well. If we have sunk down to that level, then it is bad prospects indeed.
"What's truly behind this Korean 'domination' is a rather a silly tournament structure, terrible streaming, short-sighted choice of invites, and simple math."
I know that MLG begins in a few hours but still ... Btw, still no DreamHack thread ! More bias plz !
the reason there is no dreamhack live report thread yet is it doesnt start until tomorrow and the threads arent made by TL staff they're made by people who are dedicated enough to keep them updated
Because people aren't really enthusiastic about cheering on their own country in the olympics or anything, right? Local doesn't have to mean down the street from you, and you don't need to personally meet the competitors to still be excited about them. Most people will have seen their favourite sports teams maybe once a year, and even then it will be in a large city that is on average an hour or two away from them. They'll almost certainly never meet any of the players. Its really not so different.
This isn't really the same. The olympics are an event based around national pride and is a special event once every 2/4 years. This would be similar to the GSL world championship that they had, or even the blizzard events. A big open tournament that is on a global scale doesn't really fit that mold. And its not even a matter of most people cheering on from their own country, its more like everyone but people from korea vs people from korea.
This goes both ways....people that say "I ONLY want to see koreans" are just as harmful as people that get ridiculous over "foreigner scene". There are some truly good players out there from all over the world AT TIMES play code S level. but this whole idea of keeping track of series and results of tournaments based on how many sets a white guy took off a korean is just dumb. Sc2 is a Global sport.
"What's truly behind this Korean 'domination' is a rather a silly tournament structure, terrible streaming, short-sighted choice of invites, and simple math."
I know that MLG begins in a few hours but still ... Btw, still no DreamHack thread ! More bias plz !
Yeah I thought they were a little harsh on IPL. It was a fantastic tournament.
Also "Silly Tournament Structure?"
Compared to EVERY MLG last year the tournament structure was just fine.
With that out of the way, I'm looking forward to MLG.
I have nothing against Koreans, on the contrary, I love them. However, IPL4 and MLG's had too many Koreans. If I wanted to see top Koreans fight each other i would watch GSL. Would anyone like to watch GSL with 40 Americans or Swedes? Would we even call it GSL?
Have you noticed that most top foreign teams now have Koreans in their rosters? Whether you want to believe it or not, Koreans taking all prize moneys from the foreginer tournaments hurts the foreign scene because programers can't pay their bills with good will.
I loved this event. I say this with my favorite player being iNcontroL and while wearing an EG jersey at my cubicle-job on a casual Friday. (point being that both are a foreginer team/player)
Becuase first and foremost I love Starcraft 2. I love playing it and I love watching it.
There are things that go into making SC2 exceptional when watching. Sometimes it's storylines, but more often than not, and always of higher priority, is the skill displayed within the actual game. For this reason it's hard to sometimes see the intense disparity between fans liking foreigners and fans liking koreans. I understand that foreign fans have more of a connection to players from their countries, or that they have things in common with, but do they not also love the game of Starcraft 2 first and foremost?
I was super excited during the finals, because to me it represented Alive, someone who I felt was incredibly underrated given his ridiculously good performance in GSL 2012 Season 1 (seriously, don't just look at the results, watch the games), and Squirtle, who also represented someone who has had hype before and I've known to have the potential to be ballin'. I knew that no matter who won, an underrated, super-talented player would get a trophy they deserved (holy shit, did you see the path Squirtle had to take?)
So I guess, you can look at numbers of representation at these events and lament the foreigners, listing off players like Naniwa, etc who weren't in attendance, but who are clearly top foreigners, but can that also not be said about the Koreans? I could start naming some Code S monsters who weren't there as well.
The point being, it will always seem that Koreans have better representation even when participation numbers are equal, because odds are drastically in favor of any given korean pro being better than any given foreigner pro. I can see the ill feelings this might put in the gut of some foreigners, but I feel it skews our perspective to the point of trying to make excuses for foreigner showings in these tournaments.
What should we do? Well, I recall an interview with HuK from Dreamhack where he stated approximately (not word for word) that foreigners were lazier and less disciplined than Koreans, and that this lesser degree of dedication is at the heart of the skill gap with Koreans. I can understand how having foreigner champions on occasion might be better for tournaments as they are more popular and bring in more fans, but if anything I'm ashamed that such a thing is even a fact. As fans, we need to be more in love with the game and amazing play. If we as fans show that we love this entertainment as a display of skill (As well as a stage for our most beloved personalities), then these tournaments will benefit simply from having the best players win, rather than having the most popular win.
Besides, wouldn't such a shift in where the popularity and demand lie, if anything, be even more motivation to foreigner pros?
I say all these things with full knowledge that I'm not involved in the pro scene, and if anyone who is rebukes me, so be it, they will be more knowledgable, but it saddens me as a fan of the sport to see tournaments like this with amazing play go off and have incredible storylines not always involving foreigners (Nestea fighting anyone?) get negative treatment just because our beloved foreigners didn't claim the crown. I lament everytime my favorite foreigner pros don't do well, but I still know how to praise the game and performance of other players and love exciting, high tier play.
I'm from the US and I actually cheer for Koreans and connect to them more then I do for foreigners. I just want to see the best players in the world compete, and it doesn't matter to me what country they are from. With the excellent Korean Starcraft 2 coverage we have on GOMTV now, many of our favorite players are Korean instead of foreigners. If foreign players step up and compete then great, but I personally think that at IPL and big tournaments, they should just try to get the best players period and not worry about if they are foreign or not. Patriotism is prejudice, and I generally root for my favorite Terran (MKP) over any foreigner he might face, and I would drive to Vegas to watch MKP, but I can't think of one foreign Terran that really excites me to go see in person. Is that bad? I don't think so.
On April 20 2012 21:44 Liquid`Nazgul wrote: This is such a brilliant article. I hope IPL and other tournaments read it and learn from it, because there is so much valuable info in here.
We're going to try and do more opinion articles in the future. It might be there will be some disagreement over the content occasionally, but regardless we consider it a positive development to put articles like this out there.
This sounds great. I like these opinion pieces even if I didn't agree with them.
I didn't read all comments before posting, so forgive me if this has been said, but wasn't Machine's run through the loser's bracket pretty solid? Took out Mvp, NonY, and DIMAGA, before falling to Ryung. Seems fairly impressive to me. Edit: Also, this is my first post on TL (squeeeee)
EXCELLENT article, and pretty much reverberates everything I have felt about IPL4. I love what IPL has been doing, but this time it basically seemed like they were doing a LoL event and a GSL event. And while I love watching some great LIVE Korean play, the way IPL4 turned out has made me question whether or not I want to send any players to IPL5.
I feel that VileIlusion kind of got overshadowed by Scarlett. Anyway kid is really good, beating 3 Code S players (as Terran!). Foreigner Terrans seem weaker than their Protoss and Zerg counterparts so it's nice to see him doing well.
@FesteringJester win over Mvp was a walkover win as Mvp didn't go.
On April 20 2012 23:54 FesteringJester wrote: I didn't read all comments before posting, so forgive me if this has been said, but wasn't Machine's run through the loser's bracket pretty solid? Took out Mvp, NonY, and DIMAGA, before falling to Ryung. Seems fairly impressive to me. Edit: Also, this is my first post on TL (squeeeee)
Mvp didn't attend the tournament so any wins over him in the bracket were BYE's.
So if you think beating Nony and Dimaga was a good run then yes, but taking Mvp out of there It's not that impressive.
Because people aren't really enthusiastic about cheering on their own country in the olympics or anything, right? Local doesn't have to mean down the street from you, and you don't need to personally meet the competitors to still be excited about them. Most people will have seen their favourite sports teams maybe once a year, and even then it will be in a large city that is on average an hour or two away from them. They'll almost certainly never meet any of the players. Its really not so different.
This isn't really the same. The olympics are an event based around national pride and is a special event once every 2/4 years. This would be similar to the GSL world championship that they had, or even the blizzard events. A big open tournament that is on a global scale doesn't really fit that mold. And its not even a matter of most people cheering on from their own country, its more like everyone but people from korea vs people from korea.
This goes both ways....people that say "I ONLY want to see koreans" are just as harmful as people that get ridiculous over "foreigner scene". There are some truly good players out there from all over the world AT TIMES play code S level. but this whole idea of keeping track of series and results of tournaments based on how many sets a white guy took off a korean is just dumb. Sc2 is a Global sport.
Well, it is perhaps more similar to a sport like figure skating where the individual participants are representing their country. There are a bunch of tournaments every year around the world and people generally cheer for the people who represent their country. At the same time, I'm sure there are many who cheer for particularly strong competitors and really are there to see good figure skating. This is basically where starcraft needs to get to. It's not healthy for the scene to be dominated so much by one country. An example of this is curling in Canada. It's very important for other countries to do well for the sport to be considered legitimate.
Yes, SC2 is a global sport. The worry for many is keeping it this way. Foreigners need to be competitive simply because their success fuels interest from fans. Technically there aren't any people who want to only see Koreans. There are two kinds of fans: those that just want to see the best of the best play really good games, and those that want to see their local heroes succeed (and by local, I can mean someone from their country, continent, or even just foreigners in general). If, say, Sweden started their own GSLesque tournament where Swedish players dominated everyone including top Code S Koreans, then the people who want "only Koreans" would suddenly want "only Swedes". Both the obvious and most difficult solution is for foreign players to somehow pull up their games to stay competitive.
On April 20 2012 23:54 FesteringJester wrote: I didn't read all comments before posting, so forgive me if this has been said, but wasn't Machine's run through the loser's bracket pretty solid? Took out Mvp, NonY, and DIMAGA, before falling to Ryung. Seems fairly impressive to me. Edit: Also, this is my first post on TL (squeeeee)
Mvp didn't attend the tournament so any wins over him in the bracket were BYE's.
So if you think beating Nony and Dimaga was a good run then yes, but taking Mvp out of there It's not that impressive.
It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up. Furthermore, if the best foreigners can cling to is "Yeah, well, we totally managed to win a couple series!" and pretend some foreigners had a successful event without even getting into the top 16 then you know there's a fucking huge gap.
Koreans are far superior to foreigners and the joke hype surrounding IPL3 "foreigner resurgence" was made up of hope and little else. It's not too bad, Naniwa is doing well in GSL and Stephano is still showing he can compete, but it's not like anyone can seriously pretend the foreigner scene isn't mid-Masters on average compared to the "GM" Korean scene. Get used to having only one or two foreigners who can seriously compete with Koreans for tournament success (i.e. not a couple bo3 wins) at any one time, it's not going to change (except maybe for the worse) until the entire foreign scene does and going into denial doesn't help anyone.
That said, I do enjoy opinion pieces even if I don't agree, so keep it up. :D
This article was very well written. If you have the data (and it wouldn't be a total chore to put together), it would also be interesting to see what foreigners' average Elo scores were at IPL4 and to compare that against their Elo's at other major tournaments. (The data exist, since you have the data base, but I'm guessing it would be a lot of work to put together.)
Where I think IPL4 failed was the asymmetric exposure to games with Korean players without asymmetric marketing of the Korean players. I'm not sure if they're too shy or need media training or what, but the most important thing for esports is that fans can connect to the players. The biggest moments in esports have almost all been when players show real emotion, and IPL4 was mostly lacking in that. I think it's stupid to only connect to players from your own country, but foreign players are MUCH better at putting themselves out there and showing some personality.
You can't really whine that the Koreans were given prime spots because other Koreans earned them even from the open bracket. The players to advance to group play from the open bracket were Ganzi, JYP, Squirtle, Jjakji, Parting, Curious, Creator, and GhostKing. Say what you will about the competition in the open bracket, that list is kind of what you'd expect to come out in the end.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
No, really. This is just sugarcoating the sad truth. Sticking with the SC2-scene until Diablo 3 and GW2 get's released, then I'm out. I'm not exactly sure why, but the South Korean dominance really kills my interest in SC2 as an e-sport. NaNiwa fighting.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up. Furthermore, if the best foreigners can cling to is "Yeah, well, we totally managed to win a couple series!" and pretend some foreigners had a successful event without even getting into the top 16 then you know there's a fucking huge gap.
Koreans are far superior to foreigners and the joke hype surrounding IPL3 "foreigner resurgence" was made up of hope and little else. It's not too bad, Naniwa is doing well in GSL and Stephano is still showing he can compete, but it's not like anyone can seriously pretend the foreigner scene isn't mid-Masters on average compared to the "GM" Korean scene. Get used to having only one or two foreigners who can seriously compete with Koreans for tournament success (i.e. not a couple bo3 wins) at any one time, it's not going to change (except maybe for the worse) until the entire foreign scene does and going into denial doesn't help anyone.
That said, I do enjoy opinion pieces even if I don't agree, so keep it up. :D
It's pretty ridiculous to say "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up". The top 5 of each race were present at IPL4, with the exception of DRG and maybe MVP (although I wouldn't put him in the top 5).You then go on to fetishize the Korean scene by postulating that the foreign scene is mid-masters compared with the best "GM" Koreans, even though it's painfully obvious that you have no idea who those Koreans are since you didn't even realize that they were present at IPL4. If you have a serious point to make, try doing it without all of the hyperbole.
Wow. I can't believe those posts weren't banned or deleted I guess Team Liquid used to be more lenient?
It's more along the lines of Rekrul can post whatever the hell he wants, not that It's alright for anyone to open up a thread and say foreigners suck in a rude way.
Yea i really hope that IPL improves their open bracket coverage for IPL5 hell maybe I'll get lucky and be able to cast stuff
However like MLG or any other tournament with a large open bracket I constantly keep an eye on the liquipedia page for updates as well as twitter. Illusion is so good that it really is no surprise with how well he did!
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
IPL4 was a great great event. Everyone who was there knew that foreigners made a respectable showing; it is sad to hear that the streaming got mismanaged. That doesn't really do justice to what a spectacle the whole thing was. (Regames sucked too) Though I never saw Scarlett there was a ton of buzz about it in the Chandelier and it was pretty clear that Stephano was pleased with himself.
On April 20 2012 23:46 KungFuGhost wrote: I'm from the US and I actually cheer for Koreans and connect to them more then I do for foreigners. I just want to see the best players in the world compete, and it doesn't matter to me what country they are from. With the excellent Korean Starcraft 2 coverage we have on GOMTV now, many of our favorite players are Korean instead of foreigners. If foreign players step up and compete then great, but I personally think that at IPL and big tournaments, they should just try to get the best players period and not worry about if they are foreign or not. Patriotism is prejudice, and I generally root for my favorite Terran (MKP) over any foreigner he might face, and I would drive to Vegas to watch MKP, but I can't think of one foreign Terran that really excites me to go see in person. Is that bad? I don't think so.
I was going to type up something similar to this, and then I saw you'd already done it for me Thanks! lol
Went as expected. Going to the event, I felt it pretty guaranteed there'd be one foreign in top8, that being Stephano. HuK/SaSe were close in getting to groups, but I think they'd have been underdogs getting out still, while I felt Step was likely to reach top2 of his group.
The looming question still remains: if we're all playing the same game, then why do people not living in Korea have a terrible success rate against people living in Korea?
Even though IdrA got stomped, his play was actually looking quite good in most of the games, which is something I haven't been able to say for the last few months. Illusion played incredibly well, I'm expecting him to blow up in the near future. Sase has been incredibly good for a long time, unfortunate that he rarely gets any credit for it.
On April 21 2012 01:06 Deezl wrote: The looming question still remains: if we're all playing the same game, then why do people not living in Korea have a terrible success rate against people living in Korea?
They were better in BW, they have a better field of players to practice against, *they put more effort into the game* and have team houses/coaches that allow them to succeed.
On April 21 2012 01:06 Deezl wrote: The looming question still remains: if we're all playing the same game, then why do people not living in Korea have a terrible success rate against people living in Korea?
It's the team house environment
Too many foreigners are treating the game more like a hobby than a job. In a Korean team house environment you live Starcraft 24/7. It becomes not only a job, but your life.
It's the reason why foreigners in Korea not living in a team house (like desRow, LastShadow, etc) aren't showing drastic improvements like players that DO live in a team house environment (NaNiWa, SaSe, etc.)
The problem is the foreign scene is too widespread for teams to realistically implement the team-house environment and nobody has done it yet.
Great article! And Koreans owned up the tournament in a similar fashion as to other tournaments where Koreans featured.
The lack of Open bracket games was definitely something that could have been addressed....maybe they could get other talents to cast the games on their streams (TB, Husky et al) and have it so there was a way to watch the games. I'm sure there are many people out there who would have loved to have cast a few games for free just to get their names out, and it wouldn't have stressed the IPL streams anymore because they could have been invited FROM HOME to cast some of the games. Yes it would be a pain in the arse to advertise the games on lesser known streams, but at least they would have been out there.
How can we avoid getting trounced without banning Koreans from tournaments? Impossible to tell. There are many things that we could do. Training sessions similar to the red bull lan where a group of players all set up in one persons home to just play together and work on strats. Also we need B teams for a few of the bigger teams, where the players don't get paid, but get to practice with the pros and attend a set ammount of events a year (say 1 big event a year they are paid for, anything else comes from their own wallet or private sponsorships).
Korean teams have clans attatched where they can set up practice partners, or players are friends with each other and can practice like that. But the B team aspects will help the teams more than anyone can know. Getting a good Protoss in a B team to practice with IdrA until he understands the game will then free up the other A teamers to practice what they are weak in. So your A team is the team that gives you the results, they train on their own schedule, and the B teamers can then practice with them as they want. Incontrol may need vs T practice, but maybe he's stuck playing against IdrA to get his ZvP up, he can't practice his weakest match up because he's helping his team mate. Like wise John Doe in the B team will be there to play against IdrA whenever he needs to practice against a P. And why not have a clan underneath which is affiliated with the team, so that the team will have picks of anyone who seriously performs well to add to their B.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
I think the foreign scene needs to actually be LESS widespread. For there to be a team house environment in the foreign scene, there needs to NOT be 1000 different random teams that never really accomplish anything, and will sooner or later die out. For example, instead of getting them all split up, imagine Idra, Huk, Select, Illusion, Sheth, and other NA powerhouses all on the same team? Or Kas, Thorzain, Stephano, Feast, etc, all on the same EU powerhouse team? THAT'S when I think we would see foreign improvement, and maybe it'll involve some organizations joining their teams together, but as it stands, there's not enough talent within the teams for them to get good enough practice outside of Korea, which is a big, big problem.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Yes. Sorry, guess I should have been clearer.
My major point was that if a player finishing outside the top 16 has to be considered a "success" for foreigners, we're in pretty dire shape.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Code S and Code A do not represent who is the "absolute best" of the Korean scene. There are plenty of Code B players who are good enough to replicate the same performances at IPL4.
IPL4 was awesome and I got to watch a lot of games from the open bracket area and while the top koreans performed as expected, a lot of koreans dropped games to foreigners all over the place, but the general feel of the room was that playing a korean was a death sentence and that the expected winners would in fact be the winners. In a game that mind games are so important, maybe this plays a role.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Code S and Code A do not represent who is the "absolute best" of the Korean scene. There are plenty of Code B players who are good enough to replicate the same performances at IPL4.
While there certainly people who hangs on in Code S / A, the overall talent gap between Code S / Code A is significant, and the gap between Code A / Code B is huge. While there are Code B player that could do pretty well, if you replace all Code S/A player in IPL4 with Code B players, I'd be very surprised if they did half as well.
Its really funny how the author of this article is blaming tournament structure for foreigner's lack of skill compared to the koreans. Cmon now. Foreigners aren't as good as koreans.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
The line up was completely stacked with Korean players, to the where some great players, like Liquid Hero, couldn't even make it out of the open bracket. I enjoyed the event, but beyond Stephano and Huk, the foreigners showing was that mind blowing. Also, beyond Squirtle, none of the players from open bracket made it out of the group stage. The whole thing was brutal, no matter who was playing.
The whole event was fine, but the article is correct that IPL did not pull the best players from all regions.
i think a pretty balanced tournament that would attract a lot of viewers, unlike IPL4, would have something like a 30-70% ratio of koreans to foreigners. much like what MLG had last year. Tournament organizers need to realize they lose a substantial chunk of their viewership once the last foreigner and korean personality(i.e MKP/MC/MMA/MVP) gets kicked out of the tournament. I'm not saying that they need to get rid of open qualifiers completely, but they need to get a balanced mix of korean invitees plus random koreans like squirtle etc. and not flood the open bracket with 20+ of them. I think a good way to do this would be to hold regional qualifiers for open bracket spots. Then again i guess that would defeat the purpose of it being "open"...
On April 21 2012 01:53 Flonomenalz wrote: I think the foreign scene needs to actually be LESS widespread. For there to be a team house environment in the foreign scene, there needs to NOT be 1000 different random teams that never really accomplish anything, and will sooner or later die out. For example, instead of getting them all split up, imagine Idra, Huk, Select, Illusion, Sheth, and other NA powerhouses all on the same team? Or Kas, Thorzain, Stephano, Feast, etc, all on the same EU powerhouse team? THAT'S when I think we would see foreign improvement, and maybe it'll involve some organizations joining their teams together, but as it stands, there's not enough talent within the teams for them to get good enough practice outside of Korea, which is a big, big problem.
The problem is, you do that and the foreign team scene dies.
Without teams out there to bring up new talent, the talent pool stagnates and dies off eventually. We already have enough level of difficulty for players to make a name for themselves, why bring in the added difficulty of making it harder to find a team?
A lot of these top players DO practice with eachother even though they're not on the same team. You could make the same argument "Oh man, imagine Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, and Fantasy all on the same KR powerhouse team!" but if you condense all the talent that much it largely removes the team aspect of competition (not to mention it's not really financially viable given what it would cost to acquire all of those players)
On April 21 2012 01:53 Flonomenalz wrote: I think the foreign scene needs to actually be LESS widespread. For there to be a team house environment in the foreign scene, there needs to NOT be 1000 different random teams that never really accomplish anything, and will sooner or later die out. For example, instead of getting them all split up, imagine Idra, Huk, Select, Illusion, Sheth, and other NA powerhouses all on the same team? Or Kas, Thorzain, Stephano, Feast, etc, all on the same EU powerhouse team? THAT'S when I think we would see foreign improvement, and maybe it'll involve some organizations joining their teams together, but as it stands, there's not enough talent within the teams for them to get good enough practice outside of Korea, which is a big, big problem.
Yeah, I really like the idea of some sort of permanent "HomeStory Cup" like team house environment with top foreigners of every team. It kinda balances out the "Korean pride" factor Naniwa was talking about.
On April 21 2012 02:03 nufcrulz wrote: i think a pretty balanced tournament that would attract a lot of viewers, unlike IPL4, would have something like a 30-70% ratio of koreans to foreigners. much like what MLG had last year. Tournament organizers need to realize they lose a substantial chunk of their viewership once the last foreigner and korean personality(i.e MKP/MC/MMA/MVP) gets kicked out of the tournament. I'm not saying that they need to get rid of open qualifiers completely, but they need to get a balanced mix of korean invitees plus random koreans like squirtle etc. and not flood the open bracket with 20+ of them. I think a good way to do this would be to hold regional qualifiers for open bracket spots. Then again i guess that would defeat the purpose of it being "open"...
It's a good idea that based on foreigner put on a respectable performance. Really, if number of Koreans in IPL4 open bracket was reduced to half, or a quarter, how many more foreigner would made it into championship bracket? One maybe, two if lucky? At the end of the day, it's the quality of the play that matters, not how many there are.
On April 20 2012 22:21 TheSubtleArt wrote: Funny how Scarlett beats 2 players and gets a 130+ page fanclub, while people like Illusion or Ostojiy (who beat Golden and Puma in Bo3s at MLG) go largely unnoticed.
Well, the upset was bigger. Illusion is a korean american, that's like Select. Sure, he did well, but he isn't the first male doing well in SC2.
Scarlett on the other hand is real special. She won a qualifier to get to IPL4 (so no afirmative action). She is the first female doing that, the first female to win a round at a big tournament, the first female to beat an korean progamer and to make it even more against the odds, she isn't even korean herself.
On April 21 2012 00:36 bikefrog wrote: No, really. This is just sugarcoating the sad truth. Sticking with the SC2-scene until Diablo 3 and GW2 get's released, then I'm out. I'm not exactly sure why, but the South Korean dominance really kills my interest in SC2 as an e-sport. NaNiwa fighting.
You like e-sports, not Starcraft. GL on your next journeys.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Code S and Code A do not represent who is the "absolute best" of the Korean scene. There are plenty of Code B players who are good enough to replicate the same performances at IPL4.
While there certainly people who hangs on in Code S / A, the overall talent gap between Code S / Code A is significant, and the gap between Code A / Code B is huge. While there are Code B player that could do pretty well, if you replace all Code S/A player in IPL4 with Code B players, I'd be very surprised if they did half as well.
It only appears significant in the GSL, which is a circular argument when it comes to skill. There is a large gap between Code S and Code B just based on overall experience and presence and a smaller gap between Code S and Code A based on luck of the draw and composure. The gap between Code A and Code B is nonexistent because Code B is just the players who did not pass the Code A qualifiers. And there are a lot of Code B players who outclass current Code A players.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Code S and Code A do not represent who is the "absolute best" of the Korean scene. There are plenty of Code B players who are good enough to replicate the same performances at IPL4.
While there certainly people who hangs on in Code S / A, the overall talent gap between Code S / Code A is significant, and the gap between Code A / Code B is huge. While there are Code B player that could do pretty well, if you replace all Code S/A player in IPL4 with Code B players, I'd be very surprised if they did half as well.
It only appears significant in the GSL, which is a circular argument when it comes to skill. There is a large gap between Code S and Code B just based on overall experience and presence and a smaller gap between Code S and Code based on luck of the draw and composure. The gap between Code A and Code B is nonexistent because Code B is just the players who did not pass the Code A qualifiers. And there are a lot of Code B players who outclass current Code A players.
That is true for lower Code A / top Code B. However, the disparity within Code A itself is huge, and within Code B is much larger. An average Code B player is not a proper match for average Code A player and stands little chance against top tier Code S player, this is pretty obvious if watch a lot of KR ladder stream.
On April 20 2012 22:21 TheSubtleArt wrote: Funny how Scarlett beats 2 players and gets a 130+ page fanclub, while people like Illusion or Ostojiy (who beat Golden and Puma in Bo3s at MLG) go largely unnoticed.
... the first female to win a round at a big tournament...
On April 20 2012 22:21 TheSubtleArt wrote: Funny how Scarlett beats 2 players and gets a 130+ page fanclub, while people like Illusion or Ostojiy (who beat Golden and Puma in Bo3s at MLG) go largely unnoticed.
Well, the upset was bigger. Illusion is a korean american, that's like Select. Sure, he did well, but he isn't the first male doing well in SC2.
Scarlett on the other hand is real special. She won a qualifier to get to IPL4 (so no afirmative action). She is the first female doing that, the first female to win a round at a big tournament, the first female to beat an korean progamer and to make it even more against the odds, she isn't even korean herself.
That's why she gets the hype.
This matters why? Comparing him to Select is dumb because correct me if i am wrong but wasn't Illusion born in America and has lived in America his whole life, meanwhile Select was born in korea lived there during his childhood then moved to America for school hence why people call him an Korean.
On April 21 2012 00:24 FuzzyJAM wrote: It's pretty ridiculous to say "Think of all the foreigners who didn't show up to the event, that explains it!!" when at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up.
Of the top 44, 19 were in code S and another 11 were in code A. I'm not sure how that translates to "at best 1/5th of the top Koreans showed up."
Just over 1/2 the current GSL is obviously a lot and clearly the very cream of the crop was well represented, but the Korean scene is far larger than GSL. There are so many "B teamers" that would be favoured against most of the best foreigners that I think it's a reasonable thing to point out. That's where I'm getting my 1/5th from - the Korean scene isn't just Code S/A any more than the foreigner scene is Stephano/Naniwa/Sen, i.e. the only foreigners who have shown ability to compete in those tournaments recently.
So if I understand this correctly, you're extending "best Koreans" to cover koreans in Code S, Code A, and some (albeit top-level) Code B? So sure, maybe 1/5 of the top Korean scene showed up, but of that 1/5, around 25% were Code S players--the very VERY best of the Korean scene. 1/5 of the top koreans but ~66% of the absolutely best Koreans (as defined by GSL-rankings).
Code S and Code A do not represent who is the "absolute best" of the Korean scene. There are plenty of Code B players who are good enough to replicate the same performances at IPL4.
While there certainly people who hangs on in Code S / A, the overall talent gap between Code S / Code A is significant, and the gap between Code A / Code B is huge. While there are Code B player that could do pretty well, if you replace all Code S/A player in IPL4 with Code B players, I'd be very surprised if they did half as well.
It only appears significant in the GSL, which is a circular argument when it comes to skill. There is a large gap between Code S and Code B just based on overall experience and presence and a smaller gap between Code S and Code based on luck of the draw and composure. The gap between Code A and Code B is nonexistent because Code B is just the players who did not pass the Code A qualifiers. And there are a lot of Code B players who outclass current Code A players.
That is true for lower Code A / top Code B. However, the disparity within Code A itself is huge, and within Code B is much larger. An average Code B player is not a proper match for average Code A player and stands little chance against top tier Code S player, this is pretty obvious if watch a lot of KR ladder stream.
Perhaps the disparity within Code A is huge because it is not a proper designator of skill at all and it is drawing from two pools of talent, so obviously there will be a gigantic discrepancy between the very worst and the very best. This just proves how silly it is to rely on the Code S/Code A/Code B mythos.
If I used KR ladder stream as my basis for determining skill, then Nestea would not crack the top 50 of the Korean professional scene.
Koreans did well, no surprise. I disagree that it was "embarrassing" to have this happen at a foreign tournament. Koreans play the same game everyone else does, they have no advantage other than practice. If foreigners want to win tournaments they need to practice more...
Honestly the biggest problem of IPL4 was the fact that the sheer depth and magnitude of the tournament went woefully underrepresented by the organizers.
I felt I was watching the same 16 players over and over and only heard (or saw on Liquidpedia) the amazing results that foreigners were pulling. And I'm super active about realizing results.... so that made me sad.
the write up seems to be more synonymous every time I read one to another. the pattern is seemingly the same every single paragraph. too many fillers. I don't know if I'm reading a narration or overview of the event.
People should get used to seeing korea dominate the world in SC . Just like China dominates everyone in table tennis . When a sport is accepted in a country to the level of a national sport you will see that country dominate the others . The effort put in by koreans far more exceed that of the rest of the world . Single talents will eventually get swept away with time if they don't keep up with the koreans ever developing skills . And this isn't even half as worse as it will get when KESPA switches full-time to SC2 . The skill gap won't get any worse then it was in BW at least .
On April 20 2012 20:09 Hiea wrote: This event in my eyes was pretty meh, no foreigners streamed except those that we all know, can't compete with koreans, outside of Stephano.
Also the finals, I didn't really end up caring to much, as to me aLive is a very boring player, and Squirtle, who really knows anything about that guy?
I wish I could of watched some of the games from people in the group stages aswell, I don't believe Curious who was in Group B got a single one of his games streamed.
One thing I never quite understood was why MMA, MC and NesTea got direct invites? why not get some top EU guys aswell?
Squirtle is a motherfucking badass
The dude has a 70% win rate in PvZ and 75% win rate in PvP IN KOREA He will play his ro16 matches in GSL next thursday, with 2 other protosses in his group. You should check it out
yea, who is this guy?! Educate yourself fool
also: Top EU guys do not compare to MMA, MC and Nestea (except stephano who was there, and naniwa who probably could've been there if he wanted)
I knew who Squirtle was, but his never achieved anything untill recently, he 3rd at IEM WC 2010, other than that, his just been average Code A, i'm not saying his bad, but his not got anywhere near the following any of the other koreans in pool play who have become very popular.
And if you actually look at the amount he played, its below 30 for PvP, and he never really beat any big names (he beat HerO and Oz, but that was in May 2011).
His doing well now, but he hasnt done anything in the past, and you can't argue against that.
This is what happens with good players in Korea, they are overshadowed by the top guys.
A similar issue that I have been pondering is how down people get on foreigners in Code S. I heard a lot of pooh-poohing of NaNiwa at the beginning of this season, saying as a foreigner he would of course do terribly. Actually, non-Koreans have pretty solidly outperformed what you would expect EVEN IF the standard of success was as high as "Code S Caliber." Even after Huk, Sen, and Idra washed out in so short a time, Foreigners still had a winning record in Code S, and had a slightly better than 50% chance of getting through each stage.
I think the streams were fine and showed the games that people would care about. If you had known ahead of time that Scarlett and Illusion were going to make great runs in the open bracket then it's not a bad idea to give them some bandwidth on the stream. They certainly should've had more coverage after those runs were made but nobody would know before hand that those would turn out to be great games.
Rising stars are always interesting, but I think the majority of the people who attend these events go to meet their favorite players, many of whom happen to be Korean. As such, one can expect press coverage to focus mostly on the high-profile players.
As you rightfully call out, White-Ra and IdrA seeds were most likely awarded based on popularity of the players and less so on their actual competitiveness in the tournament. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with that as 1) IPL4 is still a revenue-generating event and popular players will increase viewership/attendance 2) there is an open seed for a "worthy" foreigner to climb through the ranks.
I don't agree that it is a numbers game at all - NASL has its share of diversity and it's always 2 Koreans who make it to the finals.
I'm of mixed thoughts regarding the article and the various arguments it's representing. However it does say many things which are fair.
Success stories are one thing, I agree with this part. There should absolutely be more stories regarding the underdogs, but people didn't write those stories, because the open brackets weren't televised. The problem with this is, if there are only so many limited segments of the tourney which can be televised, how would anyone know which is newsworthy, and which is not?
Let's take the Scarlett story as an example. There was no way to know in advance, how well Scarlett would have done. If Scarlett was eliminated and early, then there would have been no story to report. But given the result, then there's something to be written(but as to why we can't, with the information we already have, is a different topic).
Point I'm trying to make is, it's a whole new set of challenges on determining/predicting what's a success story and what isn't. It seems to me more, that we're trying to find these diamonds in the rough that we can write up as David vs Goliath stories, but in piecemeal situations. And that's basically looking at not the winners, but the up-and-comers. But again - how is the tourney itself, to position that visibility to an audience who just wants to see games from the best of the best? You have a finite amount of time to cast this or that. How do you make that choice?
I think it's also an attitude shift from the audience which may need to happen as well; not always celebrating the winners, but looking at the people who didn't make it, not as losers, but as people who...we celebrate on their own merits. And this means completely ignoring the fact that they didn't win any prize money(it's not the point).
I think alot of good points were brought up here especially that the foreigner invites had not been selected properly. I mean IPL 1 and 2 were a long time ago and really shouldn't have any bearing on current tournaments. The Koreans certainly wouldn't invite Fruitdealer to a trounament just cause he won the first GSL event.
"What's truly behind this Korean 'domination' is a rather a silly tournament structure, terrible streaming, short-sighted choice of invites, and simple math."
Well, if you REALLY think about it, then MLG did the exact same thing on their last championship(s). 2 days of almost exclusively group play of the same 16-24 invitees, and the 2 extra streams behind the pay wall.
However! This is what sells best to the majority of the fans so thats why these companies do it like that. It is surely good for the businesses of the host organisation, it is surely not good in order to replace those names from 2007 (lol ReKrul threads) with new fresh blood and faces.
[B] At an event where sc2 was getting demolished by LoL tournament ( sad day ).
To be fair, Riot does a fantastic job of hyping events like these by focusing the stream directly into the game itself. Before you can even play you get an entirely different homepage trying to make you go watch the pros play.
Combine that with a larger player base and you get more views. I think Blizzard should try something like this personally.
Yes, the way they scheduled the format was a definite error, but I do want to congratulate them for making the group stage actually have real consequences.
Good article, right on the money imo. IPL4 had some good possibilities, but was a huge let down due to poor streaming and technical difficulties. Ignoring the games that the audience wanted to see was (hopefully) a mistake that IPL will not make again.
The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally. There will always be a few people who enjoy the K vs. K games more, but they an astounding minority in this type of tournament.
On April 21 2012 04:13 farside604 wrote: I think alot of good points were brought up here especially that the foreigner invites had not been selected properly. I mean IPL 1 and 2 were a long time ago and really shouldn't have any bearing on current tournaments. The Koreans certainly wouldn't invite Fruitdealer to a trounament just cause he won the first GSL event.
yeah, but how do u pick and choose who gets in, and who does not? for example whitera and idra. you need those guys due to an almost guaranteed set of numbers to float up your tourney(and please the sponsors).
the issue at hand is, how you pick and choose between the 'name-brand' people versus the relatively unknowns.
A similar issue that I have been pondering is how down people get on foreigners in Code S. I heard a lot of pooh-poohing of NaNiwa at the beginning of this season, saying as a foreigner he would of course do terribly. Actually, non-Koreans have pretty solidly outperformed what you would expect EVEN IF the standard of success was as high as "Code S Caliber." Even after Huk, Sen, and Idra washed out in so short a time, Foreigners still had a winning record in Code S, and had a slightly better than 50% chance of getting through each stage.
Jinro and Idra's games from a year ago do not count towards people's current perceptions of how foreigners would perform in Code S.
I attended IPL4, and I would definitely say the biggest gripe I had was with the scheduling. There was very little flexibility because everything dragged out much longer than it should have. Commercials were being run between every single game, usually 5 minutes long. I believe the first day was supposed to end around 8-9 PM, but ended up being dragged out till 11-12 PM. The last day was especially egregious as the schedule said the ceremonies would happen around 8 PM, but the second finals didn't finish until midnight. By then, half the room was empty, not a sight you want to see for your finals.
That said, I definitely enjoyed most of the games. Interacting with the pro's is always a lot of fun, and having the GSTL was the cherry on top (regame and all). I've definitely become a fan of ST after that weekend, especially Squirtle and Parting
A similar issue that I have been pondering is how down people get on foreigners in Code S. I heard a lot of pooh-poohing of NaNiwa at the beginning of this season, saying as a foreigner he would of course do terribly. Actually, non-Koreans have pretty solidly outperformed what you would expect EVEN IF the standard of success was as high as "Code S Caliber." Even after Huk, Sen, and Idra washed out in so short a time, Foreigners still had a winning record in Code S, and had a slightly better than 50% chance of getting through each stage.
Jinro and Idra's games from a year ago do not count towards people's current perceptions of how foreigners would perform in Code S.
What you are saying is absolutely correct. however there is an emotional attachment to the days of IdrA vs Jinro.
I for me seriously miss those days. It was awesome and I loved seeing it...I bet you that many, many others pine for those glory days and want them to come back.
On April 21 2012 04:44 SCST wrote: The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally.
based on what?
i'd like to see a poll on this because i don't buy it. i just want to see the best play. i'm a fan of some foreigners because they have entertaining personalities, but if they can't compete at the highest level, then who cares.
The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally. There will always be a few people who enjoy the K vs. K games more, but they an astounding minority in this type of tournament.
Completely disagree. I think people want to see the best matches possible. It's very much like tennis, where the most exciting matches and most unexpected surprises might be happening off in the boonies, but most fans want to see the highest quality matches so the top seeds always play on Center Court. You're just using 20/20 hindsight if you say you'd rather have watched Scarlett vs Terious on the main stage rather than MarineKing vs Stephano.
There were a lot of interesting things being played out on the main stage too, just no particularly huge surprises in the end. And it's worth pointing out that the open bracket also didn't have any huge surprises in the end result.
Huk had a good run. And SaSe had an impressive run. Taking out several Koreans while only losing in the very random PvP match-up (on a side note, that MU is the biggest issue that Starcraft 2 has).
On April 21 2012 04:44 SCST wrote: Good article, right on the money imo. IPL4 had some good possibilities, but was a huge let down due to poor streaming and technical difficulties. Ignoring the games that the audience wanted to see was (hopefully) a mistake that IPL will not make again.
The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally. There will always be a few people who enjoy the K vs. K games more, but they an astounding minority in this type of tournament.
honestly if you want to guarantee a tourney where there is nothing but foreigners in the televised matches...then you have to host a non-korean tourney, period. or you have to drastically jury-rig the match-ups so that you guarantee that all the Koreans face each other in the Open brackets, knock each other out - then by doing that, you limit the number of Koreans drastically.
Why not just change the format entirely and just do foreigner vs foreigner match-ups, a la invitationals? For example:
Stephano IdrA Jinro Whitera Naniwa Huk
...the list should just comprise of all the big name brand foreigners that people just plain WANT TO SEE. Make the matchups comprised out of every possible combination between the superstars, and do it that way. Then determine who gets what later.
Seriously the key here is asking the community "who do you WANT to see", and make it happen based on the community demand. Have something...a poll..just something. Figure out the favorites, the underdogs, who/what the dream matches would be, and make it happen.
On April 21 2012 04:44 SCST wrote: Good article, right on the money imo. IPL4 had some good possibilities, but was a huge let down due to poor streaming and technical difficulties. Ignoring the games that the audience wanted to see was (hopefully) a mistake that IPL will not make again.
The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally. There will always be a few people who enjoy the K vs. K games more, but they an astounding minority in this type of tournament.
Why not just change the format entirely and just do foreigner vs foreigner match-ups, a la invitationals? For example:
Stephano IdrA Jinro Whitera Naniwa Huk
...the list should just comprise of all the big name brand foreigners that people just plain WANT TO SEE. Make the matchups comprised out of every possible combination between the superstars, and do it that way. Then determine who gets what later.
Because the thing people want to see the most isn't foreigner vs foreigner. It is Korean vs Foreigner (and the foreigner winning).
At least half of the people in the group stage should have been foreigners. Hardly any were foreigners now and out of the three that got seeded into the group stage, one isn't amongst the top of the foreign scene (white-ra) and the other is probably not even amongst the top of the lackluster NA scene (Idra).
Quote="Only a lack of luck and overwhelming math prevented them from making it to the all important group stage."
If I am no mistaken then there were 34 Koreans in open brackets, so I don't see the "overwhelming math". But I agree, that for a non-korean to win 3+ Koreans to get out into group stage, it would take more than just luck, but a miracle.
That's some backwards logic. So because there were Koreans in open brackets it becomes harder to get in? Isn't that the whole point though? That foreigners were not skilled enough to get in?
I don't get this whole obsession with rationalizing and scheming for 'foreigner pride'. Instead of talking about how to change tournament formats/seeds or to exclude Koreans or to put quotas... why not talk about how to bring up foreigner skill level? It'd be a whole lot more productive.
On April 21 2012 04:44 SCST wrote: Good article, right on the money imo. IPL4 had some good possibilities, but was a huge let down due to poor streaming and technical difficulties. Ignoring the games that the audience wanted to see was (hopefully) a mistake that IPL will not make again.
The truth is very simple: the vast majority of people who watch these foreign tournaments prefer to see a foreigner player, not Korean vs Korean. This is because the audience feels a connection with the foreigner personalities, i.e. people they can relate to personally. There will always be a few people who enjoy the K vs. K games more, but they an astounding minority in this type of tournament.
Why not just change the format entirely and just do foreigner vs foreigner match-ups, a la invitationals? For example:
Stephano IdrA Jinro Whitera Naniwa Huk
...the list should just comprise of all the big name brand foreigners that people just plain WANT TO SEE. Make the matchups comprised out of every possible combination between the superstars, and do it that way. Then determine who gets what later.
Because the thing people want to see the most isn't foreigner vs foreigner. It is Korean vs Foreigner (and the foreigner winning).
At least half of the people in the group stage should have been foreigners. Hardly any were foreigners now and out of the three that got seeded into the group stage, one isn't amongst the top of the foreign scene (white-ra) and the other is probably not even amongst the top of the lackluster NA scene (Idra).
OK fair enough.
I believe they key there is the following things:
- the underdog story will always be, the most compelling story and the most emotional one for the viewers - people are bored of always so many koreans - if this is true - that people want in truth, to see foreigner vs korean(with foreigner ultimately winning), then how do we all but guarantee that situation?
If you recall Squirtle versus Alive - Squirtle had to beat Alive TWICE to earn the crown(but with Alive ultimately winning, he only needed to beat Squirtle in one series). and yes i saw too, how incredible exhausted Squirtle was, having to fight through Nestea, and beat Alive in one match, AND having to beat Alive again!? And meanwhile Alive just sipped his drink and took his crown.
I believe we have set the precedent though. The matchup can be easily setup, and explained - the Korean would have to beat the Foreigner in two sets, but the Foreigner would only need to win one. This would not be perceived as "unfair" to the audience, if you do the following:
Showing a video montage of the foreigner's heartfelt struggle to make it to where he is today...interviews of him really, really wanting this more than anything in the world...then you cut to a video of the korean having the good life...lots of victories he's already earned...the interview of him saying arrogantly "yeah this tourney will be easy, I already know I'm gonna win". All that will set the stage...set the emotional expectations...the crowd now WANTING the foreigner to win...feeling his hopes and dreams...
Can you imagine the crowd screaming and roaring when the foreigner wins? That's how you revitalize it.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you want us to do a better job of hyping up the underdog or just rig the games so that foreigners win?
You don't need all this dancing around. If you want to see foreigners win, then turn StarCraft 2 events into pro wrestling and pay the Koreans to lose. That's really what some people seem to be asking for.
On April 21 2012 06:20 oxxo wrote: That's some backwards logic. So because there were Koreans in open brackets it becomes harder to get in? Isn't that the whole point though? That foreigners were not skilled enough to get in?
I don't get this whole obsession with rationalizing and scheming for 'foreigner pride'. Instead of talking about how to change tournament formats/seeds or to exclude Koreans or to put quotas... why not talk about how to bring up foreigner skill level? It'd be a whole lot more productive.
that isn't going to accomplish the goal. We need set that thought aside of "bringing up foreigner skill level" - god knows they are trying their very best and they are training the best they can. The point where their skill is "maxed out" - only the individual would know this...we need to just work what what we have.
what would be MORE productive is doing a drastic format changeup. In addition to the quota(which really, is already going to be happening), is something easily as simple as requiring the Korean to win more than the Foreigner in order to take the crown. It's not unfair to the viewer with some creative spin on it.
On April 21 2012 06:28 coverpunch wrote: I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you want us to do a better job of hyping up the underdog or just rig the games so that foreigners win?
You don't need all this dancing around. If you want to see foreigners win, then turn StarCraft 2 events into pro wrestling and pay the Koreans to lose. That's really what some people seem to be asking for.
we're not paying anyone to lose here. that's illegal, and would hurt everyone concerned.
we're simply asking that the format is switched up to favor the foreigners slightly more. we're simply looking for a more interesting story than always seeing koreans win all the time, or seeing too many of them when the viewers are asking for more foreign representation(regardless of whose skill is greater).
I'd like to try to clarify a few things, because I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough. nbd. First off, I really enjoyed IPL. It was a fun event, the quality was amazing, and they clearly worked extremely hard to pull it off. Occasionally I use words like 'silly', but it's not about assigning blame or saying that the people who work for IPL are idiots. Clearly they're not, and I think I understand a lot of the decisions they made.
Similarly, I don't believe foreigners are as good as Koreans, and while, yeah I wish they were, I'm under no delusions. My real point is that foreigners have actually gained ground (slowly) since MLG Columbus and IPL3, and that sometimes results can't be measured in terms of wins or high finishes. That's especially the case when the tournament structure is set up this way. But I do think the foreign scene is deeper and stronger now that it's been since IdrA left Korea and Jinro last made the semi-finals of the GSL.
So to combine those two points; my main idea was to look at the foreigner failure of IPL4. When I really looked into it, it seemed to be that foreigners had actually done quite well, relatively, and I set about explaining why that happened. My article then devolves into three points: the why foreigners didn't finish highly, the how we didn't know about it, and the what we didn't know.
I absolutely think that IPL was a fun event, that Koreans still have an obvious edge, and that the only thing to do about it is to keep working at it; not to rig the event. I'd prefer to have no invites at all, frankly. But my main point is a little boring; it's mainly that there's no crisis, and that by staying the course and just redoubling our efforts as a community, we're in pretty decent shape.
On April 21 2012 06:28 coverpunch wrote: I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you want us to do a better job of hyping up the underdog or just rig the games so that foreigners win?
You don't need all this dancing around. If you want to see foreigners win, then turn StarCraft 2 events into pro wrestling and pay the Koreans to lose. That's really what some people seem to be asking for.
we're not paying anyone to lose here. that's illegal, and would hurt everyone concerned.
we're simply asking that the format is switched up to favor the foreigners slightly more. we're simply looking for a more interesting story than always seeing koreans win all the time, or seeing too many of them when the viewers are asking for more foreign representation(regardless of whose skill is greater).
foreigners should just get better, problem solved.
This is a really good article. If we want to raise the level of foreign play, we need to support the foreigners that are actually getting it done in the trenches. The only way to raise the level of play is to bolster the infrastructure, and the only way to bolster the infrastructure is to 1) get people caring about foreigner players with potential, and 2) have incentives for foreigners to reach do-able goals. Not covering Scarlett, Illusion, and SaSe was inexcusable, and the group play system of IPL and MLG is just way too tilted.
But the other problem is simply logistics. IPL and MLG run tournaments with HUNDREDS Of games played in a three day period. There's no way to cover all of that, no way for even hardcore fans to watch even a significant fraction of the games, no time for stories to develop, and an unenviable and inevitable string of lopsided brackets and unpredictable clusters of players doing well on one side while another is jammed with sloppy high master NA players. It would be really nice if these tournaments could be more broken up and spread out, even if that means holding large portions of them online.
On April 21 2012 06:46 tree.hugger wrote: Hi, thanks for everyone's comments.
I'd like to try to clarify a few things, because I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough. nbd. First off, I really enjoyed IPL. It was a fun event, the quality was amazing, and they clearly worked extremely hard to pull it off. Occasionally I use words like 'silly', but it's not about assigning blame or saying that the people who work for IPL are idiots. Clearly they're not, and I think I understand a lot of the decisions they made.
Similarly, I don't believe foreigners are as good as Koreans, and while, yeah I wish they were, I'm under no delusions. My real point is that foreigners have actually gained ground (slowly) since MLG Columbus and IPL3, and that sometimes results can't be measured in terms of wins or high finishes. That's especially the case when the tournament structure is set up this way. But I do think the foreign scene is deeper and stronger now that it's been since IdrA left Korea and Jinro last made the semi-finals of the GSL.
So to combine those two points; my main idea was to look at the foreigner failure of IPL4. When I really looked into it, it seemed to be that foreigners had actually done quite well, relatively, and I set about explaining why that happened. My article then devolves into three points: the why foreigners didn't finish highly, the how we didn't know about it, and the what we didn't know.
I absolutely think that IPL was a fun event, that Koreans still have an obvious edge, and that the only thing to do about it is to keep working at it; not to rig the event. I'd prefer to have no invites at all, frankly. But my main point is a little boring; it's mainly that there's no crisis, and that by staying the course and just redoubling our efforts as a community, we're in pretty decent shape.
Thanks!
Was pretty clear to me! Thanks for pointing it out tho; loved this article aswell so, keep it up!
get over yourself, ipl 4 was great show and if the foreigners suck compared to korean it is because they do not train enough. And also people do not like to watch 1 year old macro/micro when they can watch player on the front field. End of story.
Just for added discussion, I went ahead and added the overall head to head series together.
Overall, Koreans went 70--14 in b03 series. This is an 83.33% winrate.
If we subtract all "Foreigner Unknowns", the list drops to 34-14. I defined "unknown" basically by unrecognizable names or those that had no TLPD/past tournament history, but it's certainly possible I overlooked a people. (None of the "unknowns" had wins vs Koreans however.) Scarlett is not an "unknown" for all intents and purposes. Select and Illusion were counted as Foreigners, not Koreans.
That is a 70.83% winrate.
Theres a high chance my count is off by a few matches, but I believe I was pretty close in counting, enough so that the winrate of Koreans is probably somewhere around 67%-73% or 80%-85%. Of course, this list is pitting people like Nony vs Leenock, and I'm not sure we would consider Nony a top foreigner at the moment, but I still think it's interesting to look at regardless.
ps; the most off illusions fans did knew about him doing awesomely well at IPL4 - even tho he was happy about the result; he did get more motivated from IPL4
I heard Illusion had a great run but I didn't realize exactly how great. Good for him, shame he didn't seem to get all the attention he deserved for it.
On April 21 2012 06:54 aruken wrote: get over yourself, ipl 4 was great show and if the foreigners suck compared to korean it is because they do not train enough. And also people do not like to watch 1 year old macro/micro when they can watch player on the front field. End of story.
On April 21 2012 06:54 aruken wrote: get over yourself, ipl 4 was great show and if the foreigners suck compared to korean it is because they do not train enough. And also people do not like to watch 1 year old macro/micro when they can watch player on the front field. End of story.
You didn't read what I just wrote above.
tree.hugger, you're awesome. Don't worry about the guys that can't take the time to read anything longer than a meme.
Honestly I think there are things we can do to address that within the community and I think there's more to the "Failure" (not failure, but lack of boom relative to IPL3) than just "holy fuck half the bracket is koreans this is going to be lols".
I think it would go a long way to have an article of featured players every week. Say 2 from Korea, 1 from US, and 1 from EU. Maybe some of their plays in tournaments, maybe replays when possible, maybe interviews when possible, or just bios and a collection of whatever saved things we can find. Part of the reason I think that it's not interesting when a ton of koreans win is frankly, to a lot of foreigners Korean x or korean y winning are the same thing. It's not remotely fair and it's blatant ignorance, but it's the same ignorance that leads a lot of people to assume that the korean players are all just mindless robots. The koreans that have the most fans and interest are the ones that really stand out, OR the ones that are on foreign teams that get a ton of attention for being there (or being flat adorable). As a community I think we can find ways to give more attention to them, and while we're at it, address some of the "where the hell is the talent in the rest of the world?" by trying to provide more content and things on our end to help us identify with them and attach. I think at every level that could be done more and help multiple problems.
-The sound and video problems really hurt IPL day 1 and 2 I think. It's funny when you compare it to an IPL that flat didn't have Starcraft2 playing almost the first whole day that still did enormously better, but it doesn't change that people in general are extremely impatient about lag, bad audio, bad video, and random audio and scene changes. Especially when they happen off and on for a full day and a half. -I love Kevin Catspajamas Knocke, but frankly IPLs caster staff was subpar relative to most other events. I don't know how else to say that. They've seemed very very set on having their list of casters, and then one or two guests for the past few IPLs now, and moreover, their casters aren't involved in other tournaments that give them the spotlight more, both lowering their image because they're not getting exposure, and keeping them from fixing some of their casting issues that maybe experience would fix (or more experience would show that maybe the problems some of the casters have with fans not liking them aren't fixable; whichever). -I think there have just been too many damn tournaments lately. I think the scheduling system is strange and tournaments really need to communicate with eachother. I'm fine with them competing, but when we have an MLG qualifier, then next week we have a _____ then the next week we have IPL4 while Pax is going on, then the next week we have MLG arena, then the next week we have I don't know what, maybe a full week break before another tournament (dreamhack?), all the while Code A Code S GSTL NASL and Ironsquid have and are going on...it's just too much. And then we have six weeks of gap. Or we have the period during winter and january or wherever it is that nothing happens for like two and a half months. But then we dive back into tournament tournament tournament. even if they're my favorite players, I don't want to see that many tournaments that often, it's just too much too often too fast. its overloading. -
I'd like to go back to the first point, instead of just putting it int he paragraph right below because...I dont know, and say, I think teams could do a lot better of a job on the foreign scene with their players. Sure the argument is there that "well even if I do put out replay packs or interviews not many people are going to bother watching it"; you could at least do it though. "but we do do it we post it on our site and on facebook (which you then have to like to get to see anything)"; great. put it in a social medium that people actually go to in the community. And some teams of course, do, and do a great job of it, but...most dont.
I think it'd be great to have more open qualifiers and for tournaments to really focus on the open bracket a little more at the lower level to introduce players that are there or even interview them at the beginning of the tournament JUST to get their faces out there and get people to latch on to them a little.
I also think eventually it's going to be necessary for big name foreigners to start hosting more open qualifiers for their teams. I think the razer academy thing and complexity camp or whatever it's called are really interesting, and a possible way to get a lot more attention to lower names (and no-names), and possible ways to even look at recruitment. Either way the media around it is important. And either way I think eventually foreigners that are big are going to have to shit or get off the pot so to speak, from just a pure money stand point if nothing else.
In the end I think there's a lot of room for "fixing" the issue at every level. There are definitely more solutions than just "well foreigners need to not suck". It's just up to people and the community to actually do it, in a way that's interesting, and preferably a way that people can see. I know that's already happening, but, more more more, always more. Except tournaments, holy hell. Seriously better spacing please, for everyone's sake.
On April 21 2012 06:28 coverpunch wrote: I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you want us to do a better job of hyping up the underdog or just rig the games so that foreigners win?
You don't need all this dancing around. If you want to see foreigners win, then turn StarCraft 2 events into pro wrestling and pay the Koreans to lose. That's really what some people seem to be asking for.
we're not paying anyone to lose here. that's illegal, and would hurt everyone concerned.
we're simply asking that the format is switched up to favor the foreigners slightly more. we're simply looking for a more interesting story than always seeing koreans win all the time, or seeing too many of them when the viewers are asking for more foreign representation(regardless of whose skill is greater).
It's only illegal if it's in the context of a professional league and gambling, because you're cheating other competitors and fans. But if you're talking about a single event where you want it to be fixed and it's not an actual competition, then whatevs. It's not a real competition but you seem to prefer a dramatic ending and a victor of your choosing. Like pro wrestling, it would be "entertainment", not sports. You're paying the players to put on a show, not compete with each other.
I mean, you're talking about changing the rules so that Koreans can't win. I'm just talking it whole hog to make it fair. You're leaning a direction where the competition becomes insidiously unfair because you're making life harder on just Koreans so that a non-Korean has a better chance of winning.
It'd be one thing if you wanted to segregate out some people, say Code S players, on the ground that they're too good. But to just lump them all together and make life hard for anyone with a Korean passport sounds really unfair.
We need a new elephant in the room article, about what it really means to actively root against koreans, and lump themselves together as "foreigners." That's what a lot of you are doing. If you're not rooting for your favorite non-korean player, you're rooting for whatever foreigner is left in the tournament, because he is not korean. Then you see comments like, "Aww, this is boring, only Koreans left." You're all scared of the SC2 scene becoming what the BW scene became: no foreign scene and untouchable korean scene. A smaller proportion of people, based on their comments in LR threads, seem to just be unknowingly racist. A lot of you actually appreciate quality gameplay, and are fans based of certain great pros based on that. They'll root for Naniwa, Steph, DRG, Parting, etc. But then the scene is still bogged with people just rooting against koreans.
Next IPL definitely needs more streams and MUCH better coverage of the open bracket assuming that they use the same format. Also if pools are going to be so important I really hope they don't give away these extremely valuable spots to the winners of IPL1, 2 and 3. Maybe give a pool spot to top 2 or 4 of IPL4 but the rest of the spots should go to qualifiers (where everyone can enter, not Korean only and foreigner only qualifiers), and open bracket players.
On April 21 2012 10:53 MountainDewJunkie wrote: We need a new elephant in the room article, about what it really means to actively root against koreans, and lump themselves together as "foreigners." That's what a lot of you are doing. If you're not rooting for your favorite non-korean player, you're rooting for whatever foreigner is left in the tournament, because he is not korean. Then you see comments like, "Aww, this is boring, only Koreans left." You're all scared of the SC2 scene becoming what the BW scene became: no foreign scene and untouchable korean scene. A smaller proportion of people, based on their comments in LR threads, seem to just be unknowingly racist. A lot of you actually appreciate quality gameplay, and are fans based of certain great pros based on that. They'll root for Naniwa, Steph, DRG, Parting, etc. But then the scene is still bogged with people just rooting against koreans.
I really like that idea for an article. Personally I don't consider those people fans of Starcraft (the ones that are against watching Koreans and against Koreans winning). I don't know what I consider them but I find those attitudes disgusting so I try to just ignore them as best as possible. I wish I could write something like that but it would take me far too long gather all my thoughts and organize them half-decently, and also avoid sounding like a troll as much as possible at the same time. Hopefully a decent writer has the same thoughts and steps up to the plate though. =D
On April 21 2012 07:02 1Eris1 wrote: Just for added discussion, I went ahead and added the overall head to head series together.
Overall, Koreans went 70--14 in b03 series. This is an 83.33% winrate.
If we subtract all "Foreigner Unknowns", the list drops to 34-14. I defined "unknown" basically by unrecognizable names or those that had no TLPD/past tournament history, but it's certainly possible I overlooked a people. (None of the "unknowns" had wins vs Koreans however.) Scarlett is not an "unknown" for all intents and purposes. Select and Illusion were counted as Foreigners, not Koreans.
That is a 70.83% winrate.
Theres a high chance my count is off by a few matches, but I believe I was pretty close in counting, enough so that the winrate of Koreans is probably somewhere around 67%-73% or 80%-85%. Of course, this list is pitting people like Nony vs Leenock, and I'm not sure we would consider Nony a top foreigner at the moment, but I still think it's interesting to look at regardless.
On April 20 2012 22:21 TheSubtleArt wrote: Funny how Scarlett beats 2 players and gets a 130+ page fanclub, while people like Illusion or Ostojiy (who beat Golden and Puma in Bo3s at MLG) go largely unnoticed.
Well, the upset was bigger. Illusion is a korean american, that's like Select. Sure, he did well, but he isn't the first male doing well in SC2.
Scarlett on the other hand is real special. She won a qualifier to get to IPL4 (so no afirmative action). She is the first female doing that, the first female to win a round at a big tournament, the first female to beat an korean progamer and to make it even more against the odds, she isn't even korean herself.
That's why she gets the hype.
This is exactly my point lol. For some reason people feel adding "female who ____" somehow makes her accomplishments 10x more remarkable. Again, not to diminish her accomplishments but there are several lesser know players who have preformed better or at least equal to her, and they don't receive even a fraction of the attention because they're not female. To each his own I guess.
I completely agree about the lack of coverage in the Open Bracket. I spent almost the entire weekend in there because there were sooo many Code S level games going on it was crazy! i would stand behind Creator and Byun and watch both of their matches at the same time. it was so cool. Such a shame that wasn't on stream.
They had enough casters there to be streaming 4 games at once. should have