On August 06 2018 19:02 opisska wrote: Back in the day, Stephano was publicly admitting he barely practices, yet he was winning left and right. Some people are just prodigies. Serral doesn't seem to be the same, he talks about focusing on the game a lot.
"Admitting" lol it was an obvious facade that some people bought into for some reason, what he actually admitted after a while was that he did practice a good amount and the things he says are just for showmanship.
When was the last time you saw a new face rise to to the top in korea? Every single active korean pro is a product of the sc1 scene, i have no source i think even maru was a practice partner up until the switch to sc2. Korean scene had an active amateur scene back then, local competition to find the best player in a district for example, the game was on tv and in general almost mainstream. All the famous korean players were part of huge clans by the name of by, white or Dream.t. Maybe someone with more insight can give info on the structure within a clan?
Well these players got drafted by the teams, at the beginning just as practice partner you could make it to the b team. The b teamers were sparring partners for the a team and had to practice even more hours. Players had to acquire the kespa pro licence by winning a courage tournament just to get to play game on stage.Courage Tournament)
It took jaedong 10 tries to to win a courage tournament, would you say he is talented? "i participated in Courage a total of 10 times and of the 10 times i got knocked out 9 times and in terms of time, it took about 2 years" (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVfSxOEAavY)
SK telecom alone had over 20 players under contract 09/10. Talent will only get you so far, the pressure to perform every day via inhouse rankings, sleeping in a room with 4 other players, the crazy practice schedule ... Im sure some very talented players were unable to adept to this militaristic structure, also imagine telling your parents you are going to join a team house, no education or income for years to come.
The current generation of players in korea is also its last. Curious if some of the round of 32 players have a second job at this point. From what i know all the young koreans play pubg or league. Maybe the korean ladder has a 10 year old very talented player, he has fun but in his class everyone plays the popular game. Its likely he will quit sc to stay within his social circle, he may overcome this hurdle but the lack of a support structure will make his journey almost impossible.
must watch sources: STATE OF PLAY - Starcraft documentary wcg starcraft documentary:
Well that's still huge considering how big the overall population is in relation to the number of players. And I never said that earlier stages of SC2 aren't relevant. My question is not how the future of SC2 in Korea looks like but how important talent is to get to the top. The next question is, how far you have to go in SC2 to let your talent carry you on (of course always in combination with much practice because nobody can compete without practice). This "how far do I go"-attitude might be the real defining factor on how big the relevant playerbase for our question actually is or was.
When was the last time you saw a new face rise to to the top in korea? Every single active korean pro is a product of the sc1 scene, i have no source i think even maru was a practice partner up until the switch to sc2.
Maru was 13 when he competed in his first GSL. He needed several years on prime to get to the top. I highly doubt that he couldn't have done that without the broodwar scene. But this discussion is not relevant for my question anyway.
I think the line between talent and practice is a bit fuzzy. Good players are always talented, but they are remarkably good at practicing too. Practice isn't just about grinding a certain amount of hours, but also to monitor what the practice should look like. Detecting errors in one's play, discovering weaknesses, learning how to train efficiently are skills that can only be attained by carefully designing your training to fit your goals and to know how much time that is needed for each separate problem.
In regards to Serral you must not overlook how long and how hard hes been playing. Yeah he has talent no doubt and it finally shows but hes been on the top of EU ladder for about five years. He has played tens of LANs and hundreds of online cups. I often feel like people think Serral just took the scene by storm last year where "out of nowhere" he started finishing in TOP 8s for the first time and now just mere year after hes literal god. To get good at Starcraft takes insane ammount of time more than people are willing to admit. All the "new guys" like Reynor, Elazer, Serral .. have been playing on top of EU for years.
On August 07 2018 17:08 Veriol wrote: In regards to Serral you must not overlook how long and how hard hes been playing. Yeah he has talent no doubt and it finally shows but hes been on the top of EU ladder for about five years. He has played tens of LANs and hundreds of online cups. I often feel like people think Serral just took the scene by storm last year where "out of nowhere" he started finishing in TOP 8s for the first time and now just mere year after hes literal god. To get good at Starcraft takes insane ammount of time more than people are willing to admit. All the "new guys" like Reynor, Elazer, Serral .. have been playing on top of EU for years.
Yep, very true.
Most people however don't care or even know about those small online cups and smaller LANs, which is a shame.
On August 06 2018 06:07 fronkschnonk wrote: This would mean that the trying playerbase had to be much bigger than the 32 to 50 actual and almost GSL-players we have in South Korea seems to indicate. If we say that we have 10 talents of the calibre of Serral or almost Serral (considering ups and downs) in South Korea this would mean that we have to assume a seriously trying playerbase 10 times bigger in South Korea than in the rest of the world - IF talent is a bigger factor than we assumed so far, that is.
All your assumptions are false, currently the "trying playerbase" is not 10x bigger. Again korea: 51 773 ranked players this season, 26700 games per day and europe: 147928 ranked/70000 games per day. Looks like Koreans are slightly more active on the ladder.
I felt like i had to give you a history lesson on the Korean system and the process on how these players were forged. The amount of korean talents vs foreigner is solely based on the past and the infrastructure/popularity of sc1. When both sc1/sc2 merged in 2012, sc2 had over 100 professional Korean players for a couple of month. When Kespa teams disbanded 2015 it was down to 45 active, the following month and years more retired.
Without blizzard supporting the scene we would sit here and argue that Korea has 1 or 2 talents thats on the level of serral, so yeah all your talent arguments and the "trying playerbase" are based on nothing. Check out the code s qualifiers, not a single new face from the country that once had a huge pool of young talents.
Serral is a very talented player, the reality is that Serral has been one of the best foreigners for three years, since the last year of HOTS (steadily finishing top 3 in GM league), Serral is indisputably one of the best foreigners. But it also has to be said that the lack of playable depth and the ability ceiling of SC2 compared to Brood War, result in the best players of SC2 being very close to each other. Even if the professional teams returned to Korea and put the best Koreans in a house to play 12 hours a day, Serral, Neeb, Showtime and Special would still be very close or at the same level as the Koreans, they would still be very dangerous rivals. It's the SC2 problem, it lacks playable depth and a higher ceiling of ability. On the other hand the game has design problems and as a consequence of these problems it also has a balance problem.
To every wannabe progamers here I really recommend you to read book: The art of learning. Its written by former chess world champion and thai chi martials arts world champion (same guy has reached the master level in two different crafts). In this book he explains you principles of how to learn and master things. He used same principles with those two different sports (chess and tai chi) to become champion. So that book is about learning. You really have to become master of learning if you want to become very good in starcraft. That could mean to learn ways to learn that many other people would just call talent
There are many other things than just playing you can do to get better. In last interview serral emphasized thinking for his way to learn starcraft (and to play against korean terrans) but the real question could have been that interviewer didnt ask was that: How are you practicing starcraft by thinking? can you explain your thinking in details? and more detailed questions about his thinking strategies. And definitely Serral has unconscious thinking competencies. But you can learn these competencies if you have good mentor or tools (books, coach, etc.)
And in another finnish TV interview he has mentioned that he plays just 5-6 hours per day only. That seems little for progamer. But I think he didnt count thinking in this number. He does some other things as well. But the thing is that you will get a lot of leverage if you know how to think, how to use your mind, how to use mental techniques, rehearse game situations in your mind etc. also meditation (or similar ways to relax and focus your mind) could be beneficial for controlling your self and handling stress. There are other good books and resources as well, learn to learn things and learn to use your minds effectively for learning.
It has to be noted that 5-6 hours a day might seem little for a bw/sc2 progamer, but in the elite athletic world, that's normal amout of hours. In other games, especially team games, that might even be considered excessive amount of training.
On August 07 2018 22:40 ionONE wrote: All your assumptions are false, currently the "trying playerbase" is not 10x bigger. Again korea: 51 773 ranked players this season, 26700 games per day and europe: 147928 ranked/70000 games per day. Looks like Koreans are slightly more active on the ladder.
Like I said: it's just speculation, of course. But your numbers don't tell anything. Just being ranked is by no means "trying". The real question is, how do players of each region approach the game, how many of them are trying seriously enough to let a possible talent kick in.
You really don't have to give me a history lesson. I'm quite well aware of how korean broodwar infrastructure worked. I think your approach is quite onesided. Maru, Life, Dark, Taeja, Dream, Parting - those outstanding talents were all forged in esf-infrastructure which tried to imitate kespa but never had the same resources to be comparable. Still, they were and are able to compete with the guys who switched from broodwar to SC2.
But again: my argument is not so much about current or future SC2-development but much more about the factors which led to the current situation. You mentioned some of those factors and I'm asking how someone like serral, who never experienced anything just nearly broodwar/korean infrastructure, who did not compete with the best most of the time, who not even seems to play the same amount of what top korean pros probably play. There are two possible answeres: Serral is just more talented than anybody because of getting so good despite not having korean circumstances. Or korean talents stem for a far more bigger pool of players who are relevant for this to happen.
In Starcraft 2 its all about practice because the most important thing is to know everything about the game, then know how to control everything using the mouse, keyboard, then understand whats happening in game. Talent is something like muscle memory like punching straight in the target, but in starcraft 2 player must not only remember how to control units but also understand what to do next and whats happening in macro perceptive, I think that somebody who played the game for 50000 hours has more so called ''TALENT '' than somebody with good reflexes after playing 10000 hours.
I presonally believe that pro players dont do anything else but play the game something like 6 - 10 hours a day and thas why they are so good at it.
For me talent is not about being a fast learner. It’s about being the best when everybody trains a lot, among other talented players, at the top of a game.
For example, Grubby was a very talented player in spite of being a slow learner according to him. In BW, the most talented was Flash, because when everybody trained equally hard (you couldn’t really train harder), he stayed at the top of the food chain.
However, in a game such as sc2, the skill set required can vary a lot with each patch, or extension, so I don’t think you really have time to see who is the most talented overall, you just see which group of players is the most talented.
Practice makes talent shine ultimately, intelligent practice even more so.
What would be considered talent is Starcraft 2 ? 1) Good general IQ of all sorts of things, 2) Experience playing similar games or previous version of the game so that you would know what its all about, 3) Good reflexes, experience when controlling mouse, keyboard etc. These traits should give enough talent to control units in the game, understand gameplay mechanics and economy, also it would allow the player to improve, Otherwise, if lets say a child plays the game who is 10 yeras old or so, he without good IQ, general knowledge of the game and good experience with mouse and keyboard would have almost no talent to play the game, he would have something like 300 matches in silver league or bronze with very little progress and he would be considered untalented player.
It's not just how much time you put into practice, it's how effective your practice is.
To me there isn't such a thing as "talent", it's better to split it up into things like:
The mind and body you are born with Environment you were born and raised in Your life experiencee Skills built up through life
These above things are what people tend to refer to as "talent", but it's not like you just "have" it. You gain many skills and experiences throughout life that propel you to learn faster at certain things than others, and some people simply put more focus on improving throughout daily life and challenging themselves than other people.
On the other side of things there's also practice (quantity and quality), the support and guidance you have to help you learn, and your mindset.
The first group of things can be important in determining how adept you are at learning something before you commit to putting time into learning it seriously, kind of like your starting point or your potential, but the latter is still the bulk of it, as it is where the actual practical skills are built.
In any case, the two groups do go in parallel too as you learn something, since you continue to gain new experience and develop new skills and understand new concepts, etc., so your potential is always changing. They aren't cleanly split into two groups, there is overlap as well.
And I agree that it's pointless to try to talk about what is "talent" and what is "practice". You can't split it up like that, and there's no way to determine or measure them anyway. What we do know however, is that there is no reason to believe that one cannot better themselves. Humans can always improve and change, there is no concrete limit.
You can always be very good at something with sufficient practice and studying, even if you were considered not adept at it initially, even if it takes a long time. However, you cannot automatically be good at something without any practice or studying. There is a limit to how well your previous life experiences and skills can translate to whatever new thing you're trying to learn. And mindset is a thing that can trump both "talent" and "practice", for better or for worse.
Look, in Korea, people practiced in the same team house, with the same coaches, on the same practice schedule. They practiced EQUAL AMOUNTS, yet some people had better results than others. Some were super stars, some were relegated to dish washers. Talent is most evident here. Work ethic was identical.
On August 11 2018 15:52 CicadaSC wrote: Look, in Korea, people practiced in the same team house, with the same coaches, on the same practice schedule. They practiced EQUAL AMOUNTS, yet some people had better results than others. Some were super stars, some were relegated to dish washers. Talent is most evident here. Work ethic was identical.
That isn't the whole picture tho. Life experiences were still different, like maybe some started early because their parents were supportive and/or from a more wealthy family (meaning easier access to good computers and internet), maybe others didn't have this luck. They still trained in the same facility, but some started with an advantage and had the right mindset because the environment they grew up in helped them.
I'm not saying that pure talent doesn't exist, but other factors should be considered as well.