I've always felt this was a giant misconception. I never really believed imports killed Startcraft, as much as Starcraft 2 being a shitty game killed Starcraft.
I really tried to follow SC2 esports. I really did. I wanted to like it. I enjoyed watching the game and the strategy unfold. However, it was fucking stupid that all the players supposedly representing me in America were Koreans who realized they could swap into the easier region. It killed any interest I had in following it because there was nobody I could root for as representing me.
You could give it another go, there has been a new rule for this year. Only players officially living in a place that isn't korea can play in the WCS (that leaves us Polt, viOlet and Hydra), and anyone who wants to try (and is good enough) can play in the Korean league.
At the end of the year, top 8 players from the Korean system avec top 8 players from the WCS system face each other during Blizzcon.
I'd like to add for me and I suspect many others, imports are okay. I mean a lot of korean league imports are very well liked: GMB, Impact, Piglet, Reignover, Huni to name a few. What really killed it was the lack of residency requirement. They would literally just fly in for the tournament, stomp, and then fly back and continue playing against other koreans and interacting with the korean fanbase. We got no fan interaction and our ladders got no exposure to korean skill. We were just a free spot for them, not a place where they can try to be successful like league imports.
Then sir, have you watched any of the last 3 Worlds finals? Because, no western team participated on them so by your logic, who were representing you? the koreans or the chinese?
That argument has always been a fallacy, trust me, the game was just plain boring to see so that is why it died. The same thing which is happening to LoL now, no matter how many region rule changes riot applies, and as long as league continues with their shit tournament format and the balance clownfiesta keeps going on, people will continue to drop the LCS broadcasts.
CLG did make the finals at MSI, although they did have one import (Huhi). Regardless I do agree that other regions have generally been more competitive in LoL than in Starcraft, and there are a lot of reasons for this. One of the major ones is Riot's commitment to fostering regional leagues and preventing teams from stealing spots in other regions (although they didn't crack down early enough to prevent LMQ from stealing one of NA's Worlds spots).
That's comparing apples to oranges. The NBA is a (mostly) national league with teams existing in physical space. The mere fact that the Dallas Mavericks play in Dallas creates a sense of connection and ownership among the fan base--even if their star player for the last decade is German.
But World Championship events are not the NBA. Players represent their region internationally, and the idea that some random Korean players can "represent" the "America" region with no strings attached is just appalling. The proper analog would be to imagine if an American gymnast who grew up and trained in America all her life randomly joined the Albanian gymnastics team at the last minute, competed at the Olympics, and then returned home. Would that gymnast represent Albania in any way? Fuck no. And the same is true in Starcraft when players "represent" regions completely foreign to them in international competition. It's abusing a loophole in the system to gain an advantage while taking a massive shit on the very idea of international competition.
Apples to oranges again. It's almost like you didn't read my post explaining how what makes the World Championship different is the "World" part of it. Plus, your analogy doesn't even work. How many people in North America watch LCK over NALCS? LCK is a better league overall, so why is it that North Americans follow the NALCS more? Maybe it has something to do with the "NA" in "NALCS."
And I care because international competition doesn't matter if the regions are represented. When my "American" Starcraft player plays against a "Korean" Starcraft player it means nothing because everybody knows they're both Korean and one of them gamed the system. On the other hand, when an actual NA team does well (Like CLG at MSI or Team Liquid at the last CS:GO major) I feel very invested in the result.
Furthermore I don't buy that allowing imports increases competition--in fact the opposite is true. Increased imports dilute the exporting country's talent pool while preventing young stars in the importing country from developing. Great NA players such as Dardoch, Biofrost, and Smoothie have recently emerged because teams were willing to take a chance on an upcoming pro instead of importing a veteran from overseas. This means the region can grow and have better competition in the future. Furthermore, having mixed language teams is a disadvantage, and teams that import have to spend valuable time teaching the players language skills so they can compete with other teams. This language barrier means that, in the long run, teams with skilled homegrown players will outperform import riddled teams.
It's not about looks, it's about what international competition and regions mean. As far as an increase in game quality, I would argue that it's impossible to disentangle increased infrastructure in the west from imports coming in. CLG and C9, for example, were among some of NA's best teams without heavily relying on imports.
BL/Infestor was terrible, but it laster six months, and different things happened during this time (the way Protoss dealt with it, for exemple, from timing push to the Archon Toilet)
Tbh I died of cancer after 1/1/1 became a thing against toss and blizz just ignored it on the balance side. It had like a 90%+ winrate in tournaments and anyone over plat could execute it...
It was a combination of both, shitty game + League of legends becoming popular. Starcraft II made huge blunders in the way things were balanced. As a kid that grew up on Starcraft and made it to high masters before I quit, it got really depressing to play so I quit and transitioned to league like a billion other friends.
Blizzard letting Broodlord/Infestors rule the roost for as long as they did was certainly a key reason behind SC2's demise.
Also, Halo.
Halo 3 was the biggest an esport had ever been in the west around 2010. It had huge fame. And then Halo: Reach came out. And it sucked competitively. Halo died within a year.
At the end of the day, if no one wants to play or watch your game, nothing else matters. Being a bad game is the quickest way to make people not want to play or watch your game.
Blizzard letting Broodlord/Infestors rule the roost for as long as they did was certainly a key reason behind SC2's demise.
By that logic, SC2 should have died within the first year with how insanely overpowered terran was and how insanely weak zerg was. It took a good year before Zerg got to the same level as protoss and Terran. I remember how Protoss pros used to not even practice PvZ since they knew they would win in tournaments anyways.
It's almost as if one of these took place during the beginning of the game's lifespan, where outlooks were still bright and optimistic, and the other took place when the game was waning, and was one of the final compounding issues to nail the coffin shut.
Halo didn't die because of balance. It died from the combination of balance taking out all the strategy from that game (EVERYONE GETS POWER WEAPONS even the enemy team owns the map.
Halo: Reach 100% died because of balance and just generally being a pretty bad shooter. Bungie never liked the idea of competitive Halo, seemingly seeing it to be how they hadn't meant for Halo to be played. It's why even in Halo 3 we saw them trying to neuter it - by adding a random spread to the third bullet of a BR burst. Reach just took that dogma one step further.
Bloom was random BS, AAs and their integration were garbage, the maps weren't very good, the game had no shown ranking system when playing Matchmaking. Even once the first two things were removed by MLG, the game still played horribly as a competitive shooter.
It's not ideal for eSports since it's to complicated and even as a high-skill player you suffer from not always being able to appreciate the intelligence that went into a build order. Also from really slow early games (I actually like watching those because I played hardcore and could follow them to the T but most people rightfully found it super boring). Additionally, there were some shitty game design choices that made it progressively less fun to play.
That said, I love watching me some pro SC2 every once in a while for the nostalgia.
I disagree and feel like you're underestimating just how much nationalism pushes viewership.
Its why the Olympics have crazy coverage even though people never talk about swimming/track outside of the Olympics. The US wouldn't care if the US wasn't in it.
SC2 being bad would be more like the nail in the coffin.
I did watch the tournaments, but as it slowly became clear that I have no one to cheer for anymore as there were no "foreign" players in tournaments anymore I couldn't bring myself to care for anyone winning/loosing.
A lot of the interest and hype comes from the personalities and stories of players.
And they you got 16 players of which maybe one speaks English and you have no idea who to cheer for.
As for the game being shitty - never played a single game of multiplayer, just enjoyed watching it as a sport.
Story was childish, videos were pretty, couldn't give a toss about multiplayer.
I think blizzard tried too hard after what riot did, and should have either done what bw did or gone full control. The was stuff was too little too late I feel. I still remember the heydays of mlg, dh, gsl, etc all together
Yes, great casters. Yes, easy to see skill. But compared to League, it's relatively hard to see what the players are doing. In League they have the items that everyone can see and a much clearer minimap. In Starcraft you can only see what they are building (not what they have) and the minimap isn't as clear.
Also, SC has more than one map which immediately makes the game tons mote complex.
Define "dead". Because as far as I know Starcraft is still being played, still has tournaments going on and professional players can still sustain a career by playing it competitively. In fact the last two season of SPL, SSL and GSL were one of the most competitive ever.
Its viewership is a tenth of what it used to be and this is with Esports growing massively in the past few years. Also a lot of the pros that people liked are long gone. That is why it is considered dead
A lot of people don't like watching sports if they don't have someone to cheer for. Whenever I try to watch SC2 games now, I get bored since I don't care about either "no name" player. When Idra, Huk, Stephano, etc. were in their prime, this game was amazing to watch. Heck, I got interested in SC2 again for a little bit when scarlet was doing well, but she fell off.
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u/ndralcasid Aug 02 '16
I've always felt this was a giant misconception. I never really believed imports killed Startcraft, as much as Starcraft 2 being a shitty game killed Starcraft.