I have returned: StarCraft II

[Bweigelt]

So, when SC2 becomes a KeSPA game, what does that mean for Code B in GSL? Will the hundreds that show up have to get some KeSPA license just to try to get in Code A?

No, from what's been revealed so far the Kespa issue will only come up in Proleague and they are even working to solve that. For GSL it will remain the same format I imagine and OGN said they want to allow amateurs (i.e Foreigners and people without a Korean pro license) to participate in their tourney too.

[geno]

Here's some KeSPA history as it relates for anyone interested (long, but gives you some context on what KeSPA is like):

Spoiler: show

KeSPA has traditionally been an incredibly insular organization. They want to make sure everything passes by them for approval of some kind before it gets taken seriously. They are composed of representatives from the teams and sponsors, approve all the leagues and tournaments they like, and dole out the progamer certifications that allows you to play in any KeSPA sanctioned event. Up until SC2, that strategy has worked completely. Anything that wasn't given that label of a "KeSPA approved title" died off on its own relatively quickly because of a lack of support from various avenues. SC2 is arguably the first title to survive and eventually thrive in Korea even without KeSPA support, showing the strength of the title and the resilience of GOMTV.

It is important to note that the power KeSPA has is largely symbolic in Korea, they tend to enforce their will simply through supporting or not supporting it publicly. If they don't support something, teams and players tied to KeSPA are pressured to not associate with that thing. This is what happened with GOM's original league, the GSL in Brood War. It is at least partially true with SC2 as well, many KeSPA-card-carrying pro players who decided to move on to SC2 were not looked upon well and had their progamer status revoked even as they were "retiring" from the organization.

If they had embraced SC2 from the get-go they very likely would have denied any of these new SC2 players rights as progamers, and even if they sanctioned the GSL, they would have done so only if they had heavy influence in the way it was run. It's likely they would have simply moved over their current system of allowing new progamers into SC2 (amateurs could get their pro-card by winning extremely challenging courage tournaments and pro-teams could pick up those they liked the most or even get players that weren't yet pros and develop them).

But this all seems to be changing now that they have decided to partner up with the a much bigger and established SC2 scene as equals. Still, there is a lot of technicalities and traditions that they are going to have to work around to incorporate a fully fledged scene. It seems like they know the scene is way too developed to simply take over the way they normally might want to, so they seem to be trying to compromise.

The way I understand it, from the very get-go, there should be few problems with the first OSL and the next GSL, as those are 1v1 tournaments. They seem to be trending towards just letting all GOM players and probably amateurs as well enter the OSL (my guess is they will also set up their own seeding system similar to CodeS/A/B eventually, but the start will probably resemble the GSL Opens that SC2 started with). And then the GSL will be even easier, won't need to make any changes, just instantly allow all the KeSPA players to play in Code B qualifiers. If they can justify it, they may even find some kind of way to seed some of them further in early on just so fans can see them play, the same way they do with foreigners.

The tricky part comes from the teamleagues, GSTL and Proleague. Because they are starting with a combined BW/SC2 league, they are going to start out with only KeSPA teams playing in Proleague, and I kind of doubt any of those teams will be participating in the next GSTL as well, so the scenes will stay separate for a bit on the team front.

In October though, they are going to have to figure out what to do when proleague becomes SC2 only. The SC2 scene is not as well managed as the BW one, there are a ton of teams, and new ones could sprout up at any time without authorization from anyone (not to mention all the foreign teams, many with very strong Korean players). So they are going to have to figure out how to intermingle these two scenes in an appropriate way to determine which teams are allowed to participate in the Proleague.

GSTL uses a system based on how many of a teams players are currently in CodeS/CodeA to pick the top X teams to play, but with 4 tournaments in the scene now, there's no telling how useful that metric will be come october. Plus I kind of doubt KeSPA wants their teams split up where some can play and some can't if their recent performance is bad.

They probably would prefer a general amnesty agreement of some sort, where they take in all the SC2 pros and teams, and then take over control of incoming pros, forcing them to get a certification of some sort to compete. But there are a lot of teams in the SC2 scene and a lot of competing interests at stake, and even the SC2 teams are not united in their goals (I think Slayers isn't even part of the SC2con team organization), so who knows what they will settle on in the end. If they are intent on mixing the scenes, they will find a way eventually.

[Deftscythe]

Thanks for the insight, Gredival, Geno.

KeSPA just seems so... tyrannical. I hope if they try to impose such stringent entry rules on GSL, Gom tells them to go kick rocks.

Touching back on last night's GSL discussion:

Spoiler: show

After the games, Mvp said that he had noticed NaNiwa played with a focus on economy, sometimes excluding the possibility of Terran cheese rushes altogether. His plan was to punish that tendency, a plan that ended up working very well. NaNiwa's StartaleQuantic teammate PartinG chipped in later as well, mentioning that Mvp had hidden his cheesy side in his recent games, and that might have caused NaNiwa to underestimate that possibility during his preparations.

That's from TL's recap article, Seems like the general read we had was right. MVP saw the same weakness most of us did and exploited it.

[geno]

Yeah they've definitely developed that type of reputation over the years, but they aren't all bad. You gotta remember, BW is a 14 year old game with a very niche following, KeSPA definitely did some things right to manage to keep it rolling over the years as a top spectator title with multiple huge leagues and tournaments every year.

On the GSL:

Spoiler: show

I'm convinced his wrist also played a factor. Even in the games he didn't do complete all-ins, he still seemed to stay away from long games, refusing to work towards a third at all. With all the talk about him having issues with his wrist and seeing the coach come in and massage it in between games, I can't help but feel that was a large part of why he chose those strategies, even if he didn't admit as much in his interview.

In any case, I think he's totally fucked against Parting.

[Gredival]

I've heard that the reason no SC2 team has signed sAviOr is that despite his incredible potential to do well in SC2 and the fact KeSPA to this point had no involvement in SC2, is that there was a general fear that Korean teams would balk at anything he was apart of because of the stigma attached to his KeSPA ban.

So there's a lot of general gravitas that KeSPA has.

[geno]

Well savior was pretty fucked up. Match fixing scandal really hurt the BW scene and a lot of sponsors reconsidered their positions because of it.

It's not really just KeSPA that hates Savior, GOM, and really all of the Korean esports scene won't touch him because of what he did.

[Deftscythe]

What Savior did had a profound impact on Korean eSports culture that's still felt to this day. Just ask (not)Slayers_Coca.

[altwight]

People say SC2 isn't as mechanical as SC1 because face it, we haven't seen very mechanical stuff. The only thing off the top of my head that SC2 has over SC1 is auto mining, and multiple building hotkeys. While important mechanics yes, think about some of the unit mechanics we will be seeing when some of these BW players make the switch. I personally cannot wait for drop ship play for any race. The amount of micro drop ships play in a battle is insaaaaaaaaaane and you'd know if you've ever tried it.

Similar to how Whitera puts his high temps in his warp prism so that terran can't EMP them and then drops them out 1 by 1 to storm while microing his units, while forcefielding, while blinking and focus firing. It's crazy. I'm stoked for the level of gameplay we're in for.

edit: obligatory more than 12 unit hotkeys lol. that was a pretty big role in bw.

[Gryffes]

People say SC2 isn't as mechanical as SC1 because face it, we haven't seen very mechanical stuff. The only thing off the top of my head that SC2 has over SC1 is auto mining, and multiple building hotkeys. While important mechanics yes, think about some of the unit mechanics we will be seeing when some of these BW players make the switch. I personally cannot wait for drop ship play for any race. The amount of micro drop ships play in a battle is insaaaaaaaaaane and you'd know if you've ever tried it.

Similar to how Whitera puts his high temps in his warp prism so that terran can't EMP them and then drops them out 1 by 1 to storm while microing his units, while forcefielding, while blinking and focus firing. It's crazy. I'm stoked for the level of gameplay we're in for.

edit: obligatory more than 12 unit hotkeys lol. that was a pretty big role in bw.

Yes, why is playing Need for Speed on Console less demanding than driving a formula 1 car.

I don't know.

[Eanae]

It's not just 16 unit hotkeys, you can not select more than 16 units period. Also the pathing ai in bw was awful. Also if you wanted to storm you had to select one ht at a time since if you had me all selected and used storm all your ht would storm the same spot. It's things like that.

[Thunder]

Ya, but I think the point of alt's post was that now that the elite BW players wont have to spend their APM on that stuff they'll spend it on things we've never seen before in SC2

His example was suburb drop ship micro.

You guys are getting too hung up on the starcaft1 vs stacraft2 bullshit

[Pikarya]

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/530...sting-5_2_2012

[Salodin]

Any one up for some team games?

[Jojothemidget]

I was on last night playing teams i will try to be on tonight if anyones up for it.

[SubzeroDiabolos]

You know I am.

So today after doing some ladder 1v1 I came to realize, it fucking SUCKS. Got cheesed 4 times in a row, lost every single one pretty bad even when I scouted and knew what was up. So I decided heh fuck this game, i'm tanking my MMR so I can play vs people I stand a chance even if they cheese.

After loosing a couple games I decided to try and play protoss instead and 4 gate or cannon rush.

The following game ensued, I thought it was pretty funny: replay is here.
(I'm not telling you it's the greatest match in history. We're both gold, keep that in mind.)

[Salodin]

I did some ladder today, shit was so stupid. Like 5 games, 4 of which were mirror match. It's so retarded. I try terran to switch it up, and I play against a terran -_-. last game was a nice 30min game vs zerg, but god damn I wish I could turn off mirror matches as toss cause its nothing but a snooze fest.

[SubzeroDiabolos]

Forget the replay I linked earlier, watch this: CANNON RUSH VS CANNON RUSH W/ PROBE MICRO

I sent this to when cheese fails.

[geno]

You know I am.

So today after doing some ladder 1v1 I came to realize, it fucking SUCKS. Got cheesed 4 times in a row, lost every single one pretty bad even when I scouted and knew what was up. So I decided heh fuck this game, i'm tanking my MMR so I can play vs people I stand a chance even if they cheese.

After loosing a couple games I decided to try and play protoss instead and 4 gate or cannon rush.

The following game ensued, I thought it was pretty funny: replay is here.
(I'm not telling you it's the greatest match in history. We're both gold, keep that in mind.)

Hahah sounds like the life-cycle of the average ladder player.
Start playing -> Get cheesed until disillusioned -> Start cheesing

I also played my first 1v1 ladder game since like Season 1, and also remembered what the 1v1 ladder was like. Mine may also fall into a when cheese fails situation, lol:
http://drop.sc/174047

Forget the replay I linked earlier, watch this: CANNON RUSH VS CANNON RUSH W/ PROBE MICRO

I sent this to when cheese fails.

Haha, that was a pretty bad response by him, lol. Still, why did that guy leave, he had a tie game at worst.

[Salodin]

Games later tonight?

[Jojothemidget]

I will try and get on later this evening.


Edit: I am on now if anyone is up for some team games.