Jinro wrote a fantastic opinion piece not long ago about the current stat of SC2; it's worth quoting extensively:
-From my initial reading [Team Liquid comments about the game] I was sort of expecting SC2 to be in a horrible place with "no hope for the future" (if you get the reference, you're pretty old school by SC2 standards), every game an all-in or a swarm host camping fest. But I've got to say, after having now watched IEM Sao Paulo, ASUS Rog, plenty of GSL and Proleague matches as well as most of the games from the on-going IEM Cologne... what I have seen in these games and what I expected from the comments in threads beforehand, could not be further removed. I can very honestly say that in terms of watchability, the game has never been even close to where it is at now. Let me give you a few examples of the state of the game when I left [Wings of Liberty]. WoL had some really good periods too (the era that produced Nestea vs SC was amazing), but not only would I say that maps now are better, but so are the players, and the actual base game.
-Jinro talks about how balance whining and turtling go all the way back in StarCraft, giving examples from Brood War.
-How was it solved? Game evolved, maps got better, etc. I'm not saying SH [swarm hosts] is the exact same situation, but it's not such a horrible unit that it needs to be removed from the game --- if people had seen some of the games that occurred back during this period of PvZ today, they would have probably called for the BW designers heads. I don't think Blizzard are as clueless as people make them out to be. HotS is a far better game than WoL [agreed], todays maps are so far beyond what was available just 2 years ago that it's not even funny. I've been laddering a bit lately and the only map I mind getting at all is Habitation Station, and it's not even a big deal. Compare this to 2011 or early 2012, laddering was honestly a pretty sad experience sometimes with how bad the maps were, and looking back I think this was at least a small factor in killing my motivation to play. I'm not at all trying to say that the game is perfectly balanced, or that there isn't a lot of room for improvement still, I just don't get this extreme pessimism I sometimes see perpetuated in this forum. We have gone from "Chat channels? People want those?" to a region unlocked game with free to play arcade, from "Ladder maps and tournament maps should be different, tournament maps are too confusing for casual players"... to, well, pretty clearly todays map pool does not follow this creed.
This certainly echoes my more limited experience in SC2 (I didn't follow the Brood War scene and came to Wings of Liberty fairly late). These days, most games in HOTS the better player wins (as long as it's not a best-of-one), which was not the case before. The current complaints about Protoss aren't about a late game death ball, but instead about minor tweaks related to all-in tactics in the early game (which may or may not be imbalanced--I think Terrans have figured out how to handle early blink play and virtually no one complains about oracles anymore). Even the swarm host in ZvP can be solved with a few tweaks here and there (I still think the unit leads to boring games, but it's something that can work).
Something that Jinro brought up was how good the recent non-WCS season tournaments have been lately and it's worth asking why that is. There were IEM, ASUS ROG, etc last year--why are they so much better now? I believe it's because of the WCS point system. Despite all the criticisms of the framework Blizzard imposed on the scene last year, top players have realised that to get a shot at BlizzCon they need to participate in other premier tournaments. Last year mid-tier Koreans like HyuN, Revival, YoDa, Leenock, and StarDust won trophies, but other than StarDust none of these players have come close to repeating those performances. The top Koreans, when able to participate, are now coming and that's resulted in fantastic games.
I watched some of XMG's Balance Test Showcase (put together by ToD) and it was interesting to see MaNa beat FireCake's swarm host turtle style with mass tempest plus mothership. The game wasn't entertaining, but the change to the tempest does mean Zerg has to be more active when going for that style (it's somewhat map dependent however, as FireCake was 1-1 against MaNa's approach when turtling).
I caught some of Breakout's qualifier on Friday (February 21st) and saw a fantastic TvZ between intense (Terran) and Kreos (Zerg)--here's the VOD of the first game (which is the most entertaining).
Patrick Howell O'Neill writes about the gender gap in Esports, where a study found that 90%-94% of viewers are male (most of whom are in the 19-25 age bracket). O'Neill mentions some of the sexism that exists within the community, but doesn't connect it with broader trends (is there more or less than in other related communities?), doesn't explore why so few women watch Esports (he seems to imply it's related to sexism, but doesn't go into it or why that doesn't seem to impact the much more balanced numbers in Korea), doesn't examine if the ratio is improving or declining (and what either trend might mean), and doesn't explore what is an interesting reality. To hazard a guess, I wonder if Esports is on the same track as regular sports, where very male-dominated hobbies broaden over the years (with increasing female participation) to become more equitable. That trend is occurring in the broader gaming community, so presumably it will hit Esports as well. Regardless, hopefully others will look more in depth into the topic.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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