Monday 30 May 2016

StarCraft News & Notes


Frost and King Sejong have returned to the map pool (replacing Prion Terraces and Korhal Carnage).  On the one hand I'm not thrilled to see old maps returning that received heavy play in HOTS (also contradicting the stated goal to avoid too many "standard" maps), but on the other it will be interesting to see how LOTV plays out on them.  Sejong was ultimately ruined by the old swarm host (which is a unit I still want removed from the game), while Frost suffered from pre-nerf blink play (the former ran through WCS seasons 2-3 in 2014 while the latter from seasons 3/1-2 from 2013-14).


With Protoss winning championships the usual whining has ramped up a notch.  Undoubtedly until the impact of the immortal barrier nerf is felt this will continue for awhile and much of the fuel for the fire comes from Korea (where Stats won the SSL/GSL cross-final).  It seems futile having discussions about the issue, but for my own curiosity I looked for evidence of imbalance in the foreign scene (after the pylon/adept nerf near the end of January).  There have been four major tournaments since the patch, so we'll look at win-rates:
WCS Winter: TvZ 4-4, TvP 3-2, PvZ 1-5
GPL Shanghai: TvZ 0-2, TvP 0-3, PvZ 6-5
DH Austin: TvZ 2-4, TvP 2-0, PvZ 5-4
WCS Spring: TvZ 3-3, TvP 4-1, PvZ 5-4
Totals: TvZ 9-13, TvP 9-6, PvZ 17-18
The win-rates aren't hugely slanted one way or another, so the argument would shift to the numbers in Korea and overall win-rates.  Whining about Protoss is so ingrained in the scene it's really difficult to separate the noise from solid arguments.


Fuzic has started to post monthly streaming stats on TL, although he doesn't follow the same methodology that I do (it's monthly, he's not worried about viewbotters, and it's sorted by Viewers x Hours).  I'm glad it's up however, as it's a useful tool to add to the overall streaming picture.  I'll still be posting my stuff to look at trends under my own metric.  Speaking of which, here's the current update (the period below covers weeks 18-21, those in red significantly declined, those in green significantly increased, those in blue weren't on my last list--I exclude known viewbotters; streamers need a minimum of 10 hours a week to appear (including a few judgement calls)--just on raw numbers Polt leads whenever he streams, barring Destiny's return):

1. Hui 874
2. NaNiwa 754
3. Rotterdam 601
4. Nathanias 522
5. Avilo 484
6. Happy 401
7. MCanning 284
8. ViBE 258
9. Brat_OK 239
10. PiG 201
11. Ketroc 181
12. Protech 176
13. RuFF 171
14. Catz 167*
15. Beastqt 165
16. Anoss 148
17. Deth 144
18. Yogo 139
19. Neuro 133
20. Indy 129
21. CranK 128
22. TOP 127

*I excluded this weeks numbers since they include ROOTs tournament

The numbers for Happy and Brat_OK are for their Russian streams only; the freefall of Nathanias continues--he'd nearly overtaken Polt's numbers as the top SC2 streamer back in March and since then unending sodium chloride (as well as locking his past broadcasts with a failed promise to upload them to Youtube) has shrunk his audience in half; Dragon's fall has been even bigger, as the moment he landed a sponsor he's failed to both draw an audience or stream consistently; a number of pros could be on this list if they streamed more (MaNa, TLO, and HeRoMaRinE in particular); I have thoughts on Neuro's decline below; ViBE's consistent streaming has seen him nearly double his audience from earlier in the year.


I was thinking about the discussion of what would happen when LOTV launched and at least a couple of predictions can be examined.  There was an expectation that Archon mode would prove very popular and we saw a number of such tournaments in the game's beta, but despite repeated efforts (particularly from BaseTradetv) interest has been minimal--we can only speculate on why that is, but my guess is that it's simply not different enough an experience from 1v1.  On the other hand, Co-op mode, which was not heavily featured prior to launch, has become immensely popular--so much so it strikes me that Blizzard was slow at the start to put the appropriate effort into it.

Many fans thought various departed SC2 personalities might re-appear with the launch, but while MaximusBlack returned for a short time, he was essentially the only one (Husky, while he cast a few games at beta launch, didn't even play the campaign; DJ Wheat and JP McDaniel streamed some Archon at the launch and then disappeared; none of the old SC2 talk shows were rebooted, etc).

What about viewership?  There was a modest bump for streams at the start, but it seems largely as it was back in 2015 (with tournaments arguably slightly higher).

Along with personalities there was some thought that former pros might return and in the beta we briefly saw KiWiKaKi, TT1, CombatEx, and a few others, but none stayed for long.  What we have seen is the rejuvenation of some players (like Nerchio) as well as others achieving the best results of their careers (eg Harstem).


Speaking of streamers, I have a pet theory about why Neuro's stream is in decline: a lack of tournament performance.  Normally I don't think tournaments are integral to non-pro streamer performance, nor do I believe his viewership is going to shrink anymore than it has (c.125-150), but as a guy who learned the Core and then moved in with Polt and viOLet--whose whole shtick is improvement--his unchanging results in competitive play seem like a culprit behind the falloff.


It did not take long for MC to return to competitive play.  Presumably if streaming had worked out he wouldn't be making this return, but for the Boss Toss there was really nowhere else to go in the scene.

Speaking of returning players, the IEM Shanghai qualifiers brought up the ghost of Sarovati (out of competitive play for a year, and hasn't competed regularly in two)--the career highlight for the Canadian Protoss was hitting Challenger in season one back in 2014.  Speaking of those qualifiers, Snute and PtitDrogo made it via Europe, Neeb and PiLiPiLi via NA, Has via Taiwan/etc, EnDerr from SEA, with the Latin American and server qualifiers still to be played.  Oddly enough, even though DreamHack Valencia occurs before this, the qualifiers for it have yet to be run.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

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