On July 10 2012 01:32 FrostedMiniWheats wrote: This tournament was ofc another knockout. But I'd agree that HSC3 remains the best, at least for me.
Factors as to why:
- First time they got a Korean player, and a top-tier one at that in MC (who mixed very well with the environment). It was unexpected and he was the guy to beat, AND he was beaten.
- Felt like HSC3 was where they began to really step it up in production. It had significantly more players than the previous two as well.
- Probably most of all was the time in which it occurred. For me it a delightful surprise that came out of nowhere after the wake of Dreamhack and Huk's monumental win, that actually turned out to be arguably better. Not to mention Huk pulled a repeat and took it home for the foreigners again. Good final against Naniwa too.
Subsequent Homestory Cups have had better lineups (especially IV) and improved casting (Incontrol in particular) but they just don't quite feel as memorable as the third one.
Looking forward to number 6 :D. Hope they get DRG next time, he seems perfect for this tournament. Nestea could be awesome as well, he could be that guy who's like, always asleep on the couch at a party.
Dont forget, hsc3 had ~1-3 hours delays every day, they steped up alot in productions value. It is a bit more professional now, more advertising, no/less walking through the appartment on the main stream - I think they got a separate stream only for that, but i personaly prefer one main stream which shows like everything, would prefer half of the players for only one stream, might be alone with that opinion.
I agree with you that HSC3 was the most entertaining, full liquid lineup and jinro/huk/haypro casting was great.
On July 10 2012 02:20 Knight79 wrote: In my opinion the homestory cup would be fine without any korean at all. The social contribution of the koreans is like 0, MC is a kind of exception, but to be honest, even his english is very poor,its fun to see his robot dances,but not every 6 month in the same way.
Its like an elefant in the zoo, its nice and funny to see them once in 5 years,buts there is no reason to have them in your garden.
The invitation and flight of a korean to europe is really expensive,and i see know reason for take to cut down other important things for that.
The whole Homestorycup was and will be around Take, Rotterdam, Tod, Demuslim, Grubby, Socke, Hasuobs, Ret, Dimaga and nowadays additional Tarson, Bling, Idra, Incontrol, MrBitter. Everyone else is just an addition, but not of crucial importance.
Homestory cup 4 was the peak of the last 3 in my opinion.
Don't forget Moman, he is a big part since HSC:VI too !
On July 10 2012 02:20 Knight79 wrote: In my opinion the homestory cup would be fine without any korean at all. The social contribution of the koreans is like 0, MC is a kind of exception, but to be honest, even his english is very poor,its fun to see his robot dances,but not every 6 month in the same way.
Its like an elefant in the zoo, its nice and funny to see them once in 5 years,buts there is no reason to have them in your garden.
The invitation and flight of a korean to europe is really expensive,and i see know reason for take to cut down other important things for that.
The whole Homestorycup was and will be around Take, Rotterdam, Tod, Demuslim, Grubby, Socke, Hasuobs, Ret, Dimaga and nowadays additional Tarson, Bling, Idra, Incontrol, MrBitter. Everyone else is just an addition, but not of crucial importance.
Homestory cup 4 was the peak of the last 3 in my opinion.
Don't forget Moman, he is a big part since HSC:VI too !
On July 10 2012 02:20 Knight79 wrote: In my opinion the homestory cup would be fine without any korean at all. The social contribution of the koreans is like 0, MC is a kind of exception, but to be honest, even his english is very poor,its fun to see his robot dances,but not every 6 month in the same way.
Its like an elefant in the zoo, its nice and funny to see them once in 5 years,buts there is no reason to have them in your garden.
The invitation and flight of a korean to europe is really expensive,and i see know reason for take to cut down other important things for that.
The whole Homestorycup was and will be around Take, Rotterdam, Tod, Demuslim, Grubby, Socke, Hasuobs, Ret, Dimaga and nowadays additional Tarson, Bling, Idra, Incontrol, MrBitter. Everyone else is just an addition, but not of crucial importance.
Homestory cup 4 was the peak of the last 3 in my opinion.
Don't forget Moman, he is a big part since HSC:VI too !
There a several people like White-Ra, Mana, Naama, Cloud, Nightend and so on, but because of their english difficulties, they are more like a fun fact, but not the heart of HSC.
I followed Homestorycup from part 1,so im somewhat biased to the core.
Neither YongHwa nor Golden were invited. They qualified, same as Nerchio.
They were still invites in the sense that they only allowed one spot from the Korean qualifier. In an ideal world (for HSC) Sleep and Golden wouldn't have won the NA qualifier either.
There was massive affirmative action going on here.
One of the major draws of HSC is the socializing going on between the players and us being allowed to see it. It's TaKe's tournament, he decides who to invite, and he has already said in the past that he likes to invite players with a bit more charisma and personality because it adds to the way he wants the tournament to be. This is why, regardless of their rising and falling of skill, we'll probably continue to see the likes of Incontrol, Destiny, Dimaga, Bling, etc at HSC. And that's also why there won't likely ever be 10+ Koreans. There's a fairly large language barrier going on there and, apart from a few charismatic players (MC, MKP, JYP), they kinda come across as playing machines. Sure we won't get the highest possible level of skill, but that's not all the tournament is about.
I don't expect to see an IPL4 style lineup but I would have liked 5-7 well established Koreans and 25-27 foreigners rather than 2 established Koreans, some lesser known Koreans (two of whom won their spot by taking it from NA players) and a load of foreigners.
Whether they admit it or not 90% of people's favourite matchup is Korean vs foreigners followed by Korean vs Korean with foreigner vs foreigner being pretty boring for most people.
Take already said that there were too many korean players at this HSC, so dont expect to see more next time. He was quite disappointed about the NA-qualifier.
Korean players are often very shy (look at Mvp oder Hero last time) so they dont fit that well in the enviroment. Mvp's casting was..... not existent.
This is a shame for me. I watched 100% of HSC3/4 (even made sure I wasn't working that weekend) and probably 70-80% of this. But if there's only two Korean players then I'm a lot less bothered about watching. It's borderline pathetic that the EU scene's answer to the Korean challenge is apparently to put as many road blocks behind Korean participation as possible so Europeans might actually win. I noticed IEM cut their Korean quota this year and the new Dreamhack format for Sc2 is almost custom made so Koreans are unlikely to win or even get a place in the final tournament.
Guess I'll be sticking to MLG and IPL's for foreign tournaments.
On July 09 2012 19:29 Ethi wrote: There is no tournament without affirmative action. MLG provides limited spots, IEM does so, GSL too etc. And don't forget that not every korean (with decent english) is available at a certain time. I bet MKP didn't attend because of GSTL, DRG and Polt because of their GSL matches.
The MLG arenas have the perfect amount of affirmative action. We get 8 world class Koreans who've all won their place through a qualifier and then a lot of foreigner too for people who wants to see that. The European tournaments go far too far in the other direction.
On July 09 2012 19:28 HolyArrow wrote: HSC was never meant to be a big, serious tournament. It's a tournament so casual that players party all night and play the next day shit-faced. It's just a fun event where everyone gets to kick back and relax. Sure, there's still a competition that players definitely want to win, but it's simply not the same thing as IEM/MLG/DH/GSL/etc.
With that said, anyone who uses HSC, or any single tournament, for the matter, as "proof" that EU is anywhere close to KR, is being ridiculous. Top Europeans are perfectly capable of taking matches off of top Koreans, but the fact is that in the big picture, Koreans are still winning way more against Europeans, and HSC V is living proof of everything I'm saying. Nerchio took big matches off of MC and Yonghwa, an extremely impressive feat for sure, but in the end, every Korean except for MVP (who played waaaay below his level and is suffering from some serious wrist problems, don't think anyone would disagree with that) and ReaL (he's a product of the EU scene so I don't consider him a "Korean" in the sense that we use the word to describe GSL players/players from a Korean practice environment) placed equal to (only in Sleep's case) or higher than every European other than Nerchio. In other words, EU players can definitely place higher than Koreans in tournaments, but it's definitely not the norm.
When we stop seeing Koreans regularly populating most of the top placements in tournaments with mostly non-Korean players, we'll then start talking about how EU is significantly closing the gap.
When your format is about 22 top foreign players, 5 'personalities', 3 Code B Koreans, 1 injured Code S Korean and a world class Code S Korean then chance are sooner or later someone is eventually going to be able to knock MC out. There's too much RNG in Sc2 for a guy who's a lot better than everyone else there like MC to just turn up and win just like that every time because anyone can lose a best of 3/5 or even 7 in Sc2.
When 16 Europeans can sit down with 16 top Koreans and not get their asses completely handed to them like what happens every MLG Arena or when Europeans start winning Code S and not all losing every single Code B qualifier, then maybe we can talk about things on an equal footing.
Dude.
Why dont you just go and watch GSL. We all watch that too. If you dont like watching foreigners, then dont watch them. Please do that. There is no reason to be this netagive.
And for your information. Both Younghwa and nerchio qualified themselfs.
There's a difference between all Korean and a mix of the two.
And Nerchio/Younghwa might have qualified but that changes nothing about Take regulating Korean invites because he knew a Korean wouldn't win the EU qualifier and only offered one paid spot for a Korean through the KR qualifier and then proceeded to invite only two other Koreans.
There was a good amount of koreans, each of them very capable of winning the tournament. If that is not enough for you, just go and watch he GSL. I really dont see why not having 10 koreans makes an event bad.
On July 10 2012 00:47 ratbert wrote: i bet if MVP won you wouldnt even have this argument because you wouldnt try to be butthurt about something.
anyway. cant wait for HSCVI.
I thought "oh well, no way HSC4 is going to be as awesome as HSC3" and it was a lot better. I thought "oh well, no way HSC5 is going to be as awesome as HSC4" and it was better. I think "oh well, no way HSC6 is going to be as awesome as HSC5" and i know you are going to prove me wrong once again.
cant believe what you, Dennis and your team and the sponsors (!!!) have made possible. I still remember your great tv appearances on giga tv, you are such a great guy and I can feel your passion from every second you are on stream. and now you and Khaldor are probably the biggest two german esports figures there are. you should be proud of yourself, I surely am!
HSC3 was easily the best tournament. HSC5 was definitely nowhere near as good as 4 or 3 in terms of games or entertainment.
I actually was thinking the same on the final day of tournament. Although the hsc5 was probably top of all the tournaments that happan all around the world hsc3 in my heart is still best tournament ever that i have witnessed.
-less akward xmg-promotion than HSC 5 -more Interviews and incredible good production value and editoring -better lineup than HSC 5 -funny and first appearence of the koreans -Grubby, Stephano and the french guys were a really valuable addition who weren´t in HSC5 - neither HuK or Naniwa really contributed a social value to HSC3, and neglected afterwards invitation to HSC 4
On July 10 2012 02:20 Knight79 wrote: In my opinion the homestory cup would be fine without any korean at all. The social contribution of the koreans is like 0, MC is a kind of exception, but to be honest, even his english is very poor,its fun to see his robot dances,but not every 6 month in the same way.
Its like an elefant in the zoo, its nice and funny to see them once in 5 years,buts there is no reason to have them in your garden.
The invitation and flight of a korean to europe is really expensive,and i see know reason for take to cut down other important things for that.
The whole Homestorycup was and will be around Take, Rotterdam, Tod, Demuslim, Grubby, Socke, Hasuobs, Ret, Dimaga and nowadays additional Tarson, Bling, Idra, Incontrol, MrBitter. Everyone else is just an addition, but not of crucial importance.
Homestory cup 4 was the peak of the last 3 in my opinion.
Don't forget Moman, he is a big part since HSC:VI too !
There a several people like White-Ra, Mana, Naama, Cloud, Nightend and so on, but because of their english difficulties, they are more like a fun fact, but not the heart of HSC.
I followed Homestorycup from part 1,so im somewhat biased to the core.
I think most people you listed have better English than Dimaga for example.
Naama has been to 4 HSC and hilarious each time, Idra has been to 2. Was Demuslim even at HSC3 any more? Your list is really weird to me...
At the time of HSC 1 and 2 Rotterdam was living in Germany with Demuslim, and both were participating on both cups ,so im count him in as an important core member. Rotterdam and Demuslim did some regular shows on ESL, always with stories about and around homestorycups. But i dont like Demuslim, so you can easily count him out.
On July 10 2012 03:06 Knight79 wrote: I favor HSC 4:
-less akward xmg-promotion than HSC 5 -more Interviews and incredible good production value and editoring -better lineup than HSC 5 -funny and first appearence of the koreans -Grubby, Stephano and the french guys were a really valuable addition who weren´t in HSC5 - neither HuK or Naniwa really contributed a social value to HSC3, and neglected afterwards invitation to HSC 4
i completely agree. HSC 5 was of course awesome (i dont think HSC can ever not be awesome, for that matter), but it lacked that spark HSC 4 had. Also, sadly MVP looked completely out of place and didnt add anything to the tournament as opposed to MKP at HSC 4 for example, and one guy i missed in particular at HSC 5 was MoMan, the guy is absolutely hilarious.
I'd probably rank HSC 3 and 4 as my favourite tournaments of Sc2 after the all time best MLG Columbus 2011 (MC 4-0ing Idra is my number one greatest moment in the game's history).
HSC5 was okay. It would probably make my top 10, but I've enjoyed most MLG's more.
HSC are my favorite tournament by far most because I really enjoy pro players casting. Having IdrA casting is so awesome and teamed up with a high level protoss or terran makes it super cool.
It was a great tournament. But why must always the germans hate on this tournament. Everybody think it's a great event only the germans... sometimes I don't like to be german..
On July 10 2012 03:06 Knight79 wrote: I favor HSC 4:
-less akward xmg-promotion than HSC 5 -more Interviews and incredible good production value and editoring -better lineup than HSC 5 -funny and first appearence of the koreans -Grubby, Stephano and the french guys were a really valuable addition who weren´t in HSC5 - neither HuK or Naniwa really contributed a social value to HSC3, and neglected afterwards invitation to HSC 4
First and foremost, HSC V was an awesome tournament and show. It´s unbelievable how there´s so much passion packed into one place. It warms every gamers heart. I am kind of depressed everytime the HSC is over.
I really loved the beginning of HSC IV were Take was alone in his apartment and asked himself where all the players are and all of a sudden the camera man showed the programer crowd in front of his house and then they had an epic walkin with Dimaga and really great music (can´t remember the song right now, but I was so incredibly happy that I almost had to cry).
HSC V was extremely enjoyable nonetheless and Take is simply the most passionate and awesome person who devotes a lot of his personal energy to esports. He should receive an esports accomplishment award one day for all that devotion.
@Take: I wish you all the best for the future. And some new and creative ideas for HSC VI! PS: ("Wer hat an der Uhr gedreht, ist es wirklich schon so spät...")
On July 10 2012 02:20 Knight79 wrote: In my opinion the homestory cup would be fine without any korean at all. The social contribution of the koreans is like 0, MC is a kind of exception, but to be honest, even his english is very poor,its fun to see his robot dances,but not every 6 month in the same way.
Its like an elefant in the zoo, its nice and funny to see them once in 5 years,buts there is no reason to have them in your garden.
The invitation and flight of a korean to europe is really expensive,and i see know reason for take to cut down other important things for that.
The whole Homestorycup was and will be around Take, Rotterdam, Tod, Demuslim, Grubby, Socke, Hasuobs, Ret, Dimaga and nowadays additional Tarson, Bling, Idra, Incontrol, MrBitter. Everyone else is just an addition, but not of crucial importance.
Homestory cup 4 was the peak of the last 3 in my opinion.
Don't forget Moman, he is a big part since HSC:VI too !
There a several people like White-Ra, Mana, Naama, Cloud, Nightend and so on, but because of their english difficulties, they are more like a fun fact, but not the heart of HSC.
I followed Homestorycup from part 1,so im somewhat biased to the core.