StarCraft News & Notes

It has been a quiet couple of weeks both in terms of events and community news (Unfiltered still hasn't rebooted with a new host and The Late Game has been absent as well--it's last episode comically bad).  There's not even much drama to discuss, although I will bring up Nathanias--for a guy as sensitive as he is you'd think he'd be less abrasive with his viewers.  I like his stream, but while you can want your audience to like anything you do, viewers are allowed to enjoy whatever content they want--badgering them about their preferences can only have negative results.

This leads into the question of what makes for a successful SC2 stream these days.  Destiny (in responding to Nathanias above) suggests fans only want to watch hardcore ladder grind, but this isn't the case.  If you look at the top streamers (ignoring the top pros, none of whom stream consistently), it's a mix of playstyle and personality, not necessarily about the grind.  The recently returned Ketroc has never been a high level player, nor is he particularly talkative, but people come to his stream for his distinctive style.  "Style" applies to RuFF and avilo as well--although the former continues to strive to be a pro.  Personality is why avilo draws better than the other two, while someone like Destiny (when he streams SC2) can both play at a high level and be entertaining.  What the game perhaps lacks is distinctive styles of play for Protoss and Zerg (although Fenner has attempted the latter with nydus and MCanning does to a lesser extent as well with 9 DTs), which would support niche streamers, but really being entertaining in and of itself is more than enough to support a stream (even shtick works, ala Neuro).

Avilo made a lengthy post about how he thinks SC2 can be improved.  One of the problems with him is that he considers anything he personally struggles with as broken--this can be entertaining or annoying, depending on who you are, but it also means it's difficult to separate out which are actual balance complaints and which are simply his own issues.  That said, at least he's invested and he cares, so it's a voice I'm glad to have whether I agree with it or not.

Blizzard dropped the hammer on MarineLorD, DnS, and MajOr in wake of the win-trading in the latest qualifier.  Undoubtedly this is meant as a strong message to other pros and they indicated there was other shady activity.  It will be interesting to see what happens in the wake of this.

We finally learned what StarDust's plans are, although making sense of them in the current state of SC2 is difficult.  Here's the pertinent quote:

Mmm, if I had to make a decision right now then I would say yes. I’m still practicing SC2 even as of right now but I have been taking breaks here and there. Mainly because the maps being used on ladder and the maps being used in Proleague are different so a lot of pro-gamers are not really laddering right now. So I’m just kind of waiting around and hoping for a map pool change. I plan on continuing my activities in America, so I’m planning out my timing for that. I probably won’t do it though until we arrive at a time where there are tons of tournaments available.

So he's not planning to attempt the grind in Korea, but I don't know how he imagines participating in a meaningful way in America.  Perhaps the visa he had from last year is still valid?  If not it's difficult to imagine him participating until 2017 (assuming, of course, there isn't a passport lock for WCS by then).

David Kim's most recent community post included what I find as a rather odd sentiment:

While we haven’t seen this discussed, we want to share one of the main goals we are striving for with StarCraft II—the joy of mastery. Because unit changes only happen when they’re absolutely needed, players can chase the fun of really digging deep into how each specific unit is mastered. We believe this is one of the core fun elements of StarCraft II, and one that is unique to this game. If units were changing drastically all the time, it could feel far less rewarding to invest time and effort to master them. This is a large reason why we believe so strongly in the importance of making as few changes as possible and targeting specific problem areas only when absolutely necessary.

I'm not sure where they've drawn this impression from--it's not one I've seen expressed--unit mastery?  It's quite bizarre.  Maybe they have data I haven't seen, but it seems off the mark for what people enjoy about SC2.  His post regarding buffing photo cannons against Mutalisks seems good, while I'm very worried about them tweaking the swarm host (a unit I've disliked since HOTS beta).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

StarCraft News & Notes

It has been a busy busy time in SC2 land, so let's get to it.

I love the ladder element of WCS--it's not perfect by any means, but I like the idea of ladder heroes getting to make their run against the pros and everyone knowing who they are playing against (a few streamed their efforts, which was nice).  This time we had a lot more drama as MarineLorD, DnS, and MajOr were all disqualified (here and here) for suspected win-trading.  The evidence for the former two is apparently pretty solid, while the latter has been protested quite a bit from Juan (you can read his response and Destiny's rebuttal here).  The win-trading, if true, is pretty stupid, but it's the tip of the iceberg of the kinds of things that can happen (eg teammates snipping those close to qualifying, or those already safe snipping potential opponents); I'm not sure that there's a foolproof way to prevent such shenanigans from happening.  I don't think these instances should sour people on the process, but obviously there's room for improvement.  As for the results, here's EU with where they finished the last time in brackets (if they were top-25):

EU
1. Nerchio (1)
2. VortiX
3. Snute (12)
4. MarineLorD (13)*
5. ShoWTimE (3)
6. uThermal (23)
7. Elazer (9)
8. Happy (2)
9. DnS*
10. Bunny
11. souL (19)
12. Lilbow (4)
13. Dayshi (10)
14. MaNa (8)
15. LucifroN
16. SortOf (16)
17. barcode Protoss
18. Bly (7)
19. MajOr (5)
20. Guru (21)
21. Botvinnik
22. Strange
23. Lambo (14)
24. TLO (24)
25. Zanster (17)

*both disqualified

Players from the previous top-25 who don't appear: PtitDrogo (6), Harstem (11), Serral (15), Tefel (18), Welmu (20), GunGFuBanDa (25).  Both Harstem and PtitDrogo will get invites to the tournament due to their place in the WCS standings, so their non-participation makes sense (although I don't like that players get slots for that).  VortiX didn't attend the last tournament he qualified for, so if he qualified I was unsure whether he (or his brother) would actually attend, but it's fun to see both back in the game and competing at a high level.

As for the results of the subsequent qualifying bracket, Nerchio won in top spot while ShoWTimE  won in the losers bracket.  The games were generally quite good, although Dayshi stands out as the only player who failed to win a game.

Here's how NA panned out:
1. Neeb (3)
2. Hydra (1)
3. MaSa (10)
4. PandaBearMe (5)
5. PiLiPiLi (6)
6. puCK (12)
7. Scarlett (17)
8. Polt (2)
9. HuK (9)
10. Bioice
11. Bails (13)
12. NoRegreT (8)
13. Drunkenboi (18)
14. KoMA (15)
15. JonSnow (7)
16. ViBE
17. EJK
18. State (11)
19. RoO
20. Pokebunny
21. scv
22. RuFF (20)
23. Zan
24. GAMETIME
25. Raze

Players from the previous top-25 who don't appear: viOLet (4), Intense (14), qxc (16), RayReign (19), Semper (21), noname (22), Jig (23), PiG (24), and Xenocider (25).  All three Koreans will get invites from their WCS standings (viOLet, who is in Korea, was the only one who did not participate).  Pokebunny offered an interesting retrospective of his effort to qualify, while, State somehow struggled with time zones and started his run too late (reminscent of Scarlett from the previous ladder qualifier).

The subsequent qualifier included the most surprising results, as both Koreans were "knocked out" (they both qualify anyway) in the process.  Neeb finished first (needing to beat Polt along the way), while puCK wound up beating Hydra twice and then defeating Polt in a re-match for the final slot (which I believe he would have received anyway given the Koreans position in the standings--I really hate that part of the WCS system).  Bioice apparently no-showed for his initial match before getting 3-0'd by ViBE in the losers bracket--I haven't seen an explanation for this so I don't know what happened.  Scarlett, who qualified this time around, was bounced early and still seems a long way from her 2013 form.

Immediately following the above we had the NA qualifiers for DreamHack Austin (not ideal scheduling).  This was passport locked so there were no Koreans (although there were delays again as people unable to play signed up).  I missed watching a lot of this qualifier, but what I did see was excellent.  In the end Neeb once again qualified, this time alongside JonSnow.  The aforementioned Scarlett did better in this qualifier, but still failed to make it through (Bails just narrowly missed it).

Clearly Blizzard read Stuchiu's piece on maps as the latest community post responds to points brought up in it.  I think they've saved themselves a lot of headaches by moving away from the "standard/non-standard" labeling and focusing more on diversity.

Ketroc is apparently returning to SC2 streaming and I'm always happy when someone comes back to the scene (mass raven fans take note!).

Jakatak launched a website which he talks about here.  I hope it does well--it's an interesting idea and certainly the aggregator will be useful to anyone interested in learning more about the game.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

StarCraft News & Notes

I was happy to see that Copa America has finally settled on an English caster after their falling out with Basetradetv long ago.  Wardi is covering it for them--I'm not sure how much attention he can attract to the scene, but not having an English cast was pointlessly limiting.  I think it's a fun tournament, even if MajOr and Kelazhur win it every time.  Incidentally, I've watched both the Spanish and Portuguese streams and both seem pretty fun.  My hope is that we'll get a breakout performance from someone in the scene to challenge the two dominant players (perhaps Pacomike?).

Speaking of English casts, I'm happy ESL is casting the EPS (Meisterschaft).  I've long been a fan of the tournament (it's a bit Protoss heavy, but not overwhelmingly so), and I think regional tournaments like this are the lifeblood of the scene.  TLO actually played in Cup #4 (losing to HaNfy), although he did not participate in the following Cup.

Stuchiu wrote a long piece about maps that's well worth reading (keeping in mind his biases--his list of creative players is 100% Korean and his solutions seem invariably linked to old ideas).  It's an interesting trip through SC2 map history, especially for those who weren't there at the beginning (one thing I wish he'd done is link all the games he thought were interesting instead of embedding just a few).  I suspect a lot of his reasoning for liking or disliking maps were sacrificed for the sake of keeping the piece from being even longer, but it would be nice if he'd attempted to justify his opinions thoroughly (LinksYouEDM on the Reddit thread goes into this more thoroughly).  I've picked out a few quotes:

It is hard to distinguish between core gameplay and the maps and there are examples of maps influencing the game play (Blink Era), gameplay superseding anything a map can do (BL/infestor) and parts where both contribute (SH and Mech).

[T]here is another contributing factor as to why Blizzard might feel there was a lot of staleness in the game ...  all pro players [refine] build orders that deal with a majority of what anyone can throw at them in one way or another.

As for standard maps contributing to the staleness of the game: I can see it to some extent, but I think a majority of the great games come from the standard maps.

[P]ros will be vetoing the non-standard maps as much as possible so the amount of times a map is played also leads to that, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

I've talked to pros, mapmakers and read all of Blizzard’s postings. No one has come out with an actual definition of what they believe the standard to be beyond the map that players like to play the most. "Standard" is an ever changing concept so trying to define what you want as standard is incredibly problematic when trying to design a map as no one has a set definition for it.

His suggestion that I agree with is freeing up some of the restrictions on the mapmakers--if Blizzard wants more diversity then that's one way to do it.  However, his old school idea of going back to having separate maps for casuals and pros is a complete non-starter: fans want to play on the same maps as their favourite players (one commenter wrote, "Locking out 95% of the player base from advanced maps doesn't seem like a good idea").  I do think he could have tried a little harder to identify what "standard" could mean--reading through the TL thread a couple of people have tried:

(tokinho) Usually can take 2 bases with a relatively small choke and a third with a much larger one. Usually there is a positional high ground outside the third base and a place inside the main where a drop could occur. ... Since +1 and +2 upgrades are huge for terran bio, and Tech comes into full force around the same time. TvP will always like maps that have those timings thus having 2 base play with a risky third is more effective. The only one that remains is PvZ. Which usually does well with a large open area and then chokes on either side of the map. Usually there is almost no fights PvZ until one big battle which usually the zerg is trying to prepare for in the open are and the protoss is trying to find ways to push across that space.

(Big J) On any HotS map zerg had to open 3 hatch against Protoss. Terran had to open 3 CC/hellions against Zerg. Protoss had to open 2 base colossus on any map against Terran and so on. The variations you are talking about are adjustments or metagames to these builds that come after you have studied them for months or years and that will naturally arise in any strategy.  "3 rax reaper" is not the end of the build order evolution if this build stays good. At some point it may split into variations like "2 rax 5 reaper" or "3rax 8 reaper" or "3 rax reaper until you die". In the same manner that 3 CC/hellion evovled into various builds like 3CC hellion/banshee-->Mech or Bio or 3CC hellion double ebay or even the metagaming "he won't baneling bust me because it's bad against 3CC/hellion" gasless 3CC Bomber build. But the skeleton opening was always the same and very similar. Radically new maps have the potential to spawn radically new builds to call standard on these maps. The prerequisite for this is a robust balance and design of the races so that you don't have to rely on the gimmicks-that-have-become-standard like a 9-wide ramps and X-rush distance. 

This isn't to say the above is necessarily correct, but it's the kind of thing that could have appeared in the piece.  As a fan I like to see a variety of strategies--even fun ones like HOTS muta-ling-bane vs bio-mine eventually got tired.  My preference would be to ensure all units are viable giving them a place in the game and so far LOTV has done that better than any previous iterations of the game, but there's always room for improvement.

More fundamentally related to this question is a much more interesting one: is gameplay diversity what attracts fans?  Clearly skill alone isn't particularly important.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)