TheLonelyCarrier Profile Joined December 2010 United States 36 Posts Last Edited: 2010-12-21 17:17:19 #1 EDIT: As I have added new queries and observations that are buried deep within this rather dense thread, I will bring my further observations and reactions to others thoughts to this original post to make it easier for people seeing the thread for the first time to participate.



I just finished watching the finals of GSL season 3. In case you haven't caught it yet, I will refrain from revealing the winner. The results are less important than the sentiments being expressed by many members of this fair community leading up to, during and after this seasons climax; the general thrust of that sentiment being that TSL Rain just didn't belong here. Some people agreed, others disagreed and it was all very passionate.



Let me back up for a moment. Though I enjoyed a lot of SC1 and BW in college with friends, I did not follow the pro scene of that game at all. I have much more history with the professional Street Fighter scene. I have only over the last 7 months starting with the SC2 beta, become interested (and quite engrossed) in the culture of the professional StarCraft scene. A lot of what I am reacting to here, and why I pose the question in the thread title comes from the great differences I see between the SF scene and SC scene.



I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. It makes sense that in a game of limited information that there may be perceptions from casual gamers that some wins are "cheesy" or just plain luck, but the more dedicated, educated players know enough to know that isn't strictly the case so I don't find that to be terribly damning.



What is a bit off putting for me, given what I am used to in the culture I know (that of Street Fighter) is that even at the level of TeamLiquid veterans, which I would classify as the educated enthusiast, comparabale in SF to the Shoryuken or iPlayWinner community, there remains a strong sentiment that players of lesser skill can beat players of greater skill. Not only beat as in grab a freak win off them, but consistently beat players above their skill level in the order that they are able to outlast 2,000 other contestants to play in a game that if they win will net them $87,000 dollars. This concept simply does not exist in the SF world.



In the SF world, the best of the best are nigh unbeatable gods who can only be challenged by other members of the pantheon. Even among them there is a pretty clear heirarchy. As an example: Daigo Umehara is as close to untouchable as we have. The number of players who can take even a single match off him would fit comfortably on one hand. He is in the middle of a slump right now. This year, 2 people actually beat him in a Bo3. Both of the ones who did it are top, top players whose ability is unquestionably extremely high. This guy travels the world playing in tournaments as a living. Losing 2 Bo3's inside a year is a slump. Process that.



While listening to the State of the Game podcast a couple of weeks back, I think it was inControl or Nony who said (they were discussing the whole MLG Extended Series debate) that even the best players win 70 to 75% of their matches. I am paraphrasing, but one of them said something to the order of:



"If FruitDealer hopped on the ladder, on any given night random diamond player #5 has a decent shot at beating him, maybe with a unique build, or a strange timing. Maybe in a tourney setting where it was Bo3 Fruit would figure the guy out and come back and win, but in a given match one of the best players in the world can lose to someone who isn't one of the best players in the world."



Again, paraphrasing, but this is what was said by a professional SC player. This is not, in my experience a rare sentiment amongst the professional community. While I admit it isn't the case that if a pro says it that it must be inarguably true, the words of the people doing this for as long as the last 13 years in some cases must have SOME merit.



Artosis was very vocal about how weak he felt BitByBit's skills were. Yet he made it through qualifiers (something guys like Tester haven't managed since season 1), knocked out Haypro and got all the way to Ro16 in the biggest, most competitive tourney SC2 has.



Right before Ro8, inControl was asked to make a prediction about who would win in NesTea vs Rain and he basically said Nestea was supposed to but that he had a bad feeling he wouldn't. He was right, Rain went all the way to the big dance.



In the same conversation MarineKing came up and IdrA said one of the ballsiest, most honest things I have ever heard a pro say about one of his contemporaries, again paraphrasing:



"MarineKing hasn't earned/doesn't deserve a single thing he has gotten."



Woah! Even more "woah" is that despite IdrA's infamy as a QQer, no one raised a point of contention with that statement. In fact Artosis concurred and said that MarineKing has to stop winning with the style of play he uses, because if he doesn't it may really prove that the marine is actually broken.



I re-iterate: These are professionals. They are not 12 year olds talking out their ass about things they know nothing about.



So in light of all these sentiments, which in the pro-gaming community I am more familiar with do not exist in any way shape or form, do you, the players and community members believe that:



1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era?



2. In an appropriate percentage of situations SC2 rewards the more skilled player with victory?



I am fully aware that this may all be par for the course. But again, while say Super Street Fighter 4 isn't totally 100% balanced to the tee, I rarely if ever hear from that game's enthusiast or professional community that any win is less than 100% earned. I am willing to accept that the nature of these two competitive scenes may just have different dynamics. I want to know if its just that, or if you believe, for one reason or another, that SC2 is not rewarding skilled players acceptably.





**UPDATE**



So just a simple addition to the discussion since my initial questions have been well mined at this point:



We seem to have established that the state of things is to be expected, based both upon the win percentages established by BW, and on the idea that a limited information game will always have a higher degree of volatility and built in "randomness". A great majority of you feel this is all natural and that a degree of it will work itself out os the years go by and the game gets figured out. Great.



Going hand in hand with this is the notion that you all largley share that the moaning in the forums as well as the opinions of some pros such as IdrA, iNcontrol, Artosis and others is mostly baseless. Most of you seem to believe that despite their experience, and the likely fact that they understand as you do, that there is a degree of built in variation and that the game is still young, they are more or less over-reacting, whining or otherwise QQing. This plays in to my earlier example of American Football.



The players aren't sages, they are people. They can, and will deride fellow players whose methods they have issue with regardless of whether its valid or fair. I am not calling this a bad conclusion. Quite to the contrary, some people feel this kind of competition, trash talk and derisiveness is an important element to making esports compelling entertainment in a similar way as traditional sports.



So my question in light of this fact is, who ARE the sages? Who are the objective keepers of peace? the voices of reason who look into the camera and tell us who is just being a big baby and who is speaking the truth? In traditional sports it would be analysts, tv commentators and such. But our esport is so young, even with BW considered, that the people in those roles are also more or less still players caught up in the thick of things.



Someone has to be the voice of reason. If I am to understand the feedback here, even respected pros like IdrA, Artosis and iNcontrol don't qualify as authorities on the matter of what is and isn't good for the game. So who guides the player base then? The pro team coaches? The forum users? The players themselves? It's clear there is a pretty unhealthy divide in both the fanbase and player base about what "skill" is and what it means to "deserve" a win and how the game is "supposed" to be played. This doesn't seem very healthy for the game's future. Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?





**UPDATE 2**



Just to further clarify, I brought SF into the discussion more as a contrast of the communities and relative win percentages of the best players. I did not mean to imply the two genres were similar and should have similar results. Sorry if it came off that way.





Show nested quote +

I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning.







Then plz tell us what the definition of "the best" is, because i always thought, the ones who win the most games are the best. Then plz tell us what the definition of "the best" is, because i always thought, the ones who win the most games are the best.





This is actually tantamount to why I brought the SF community into the picture. In the SF community, everyone thinks that the person who wins is the best.....because they won. Daigo is the best.....because he wins the most. In that sub-culture, the definitions of abstract concepts like "skill" and what being "the best" is are universally agreed upon. The guy who wins the most has the most "skill" and is "the best"



As the last 13 pages of this thread prove, no such certainty about how those terms are defined exists in the SC2 community. Some people agree with IdrA's statement about MK, others think its ludicrous and borderline ignorant. Artosis was complimenting/deriding Terran players by describing how dissimilar/similar their playstyle was to BitByBit's. I was just going through my twitter feed and found this gem from Day9:





"The GSL: where Koreans play terribly and cheese everytime, shaking their heads when they lose as though it was a close game!"





I think Morrow made a good point about what the common thread here may be:



I just finished watching the finals of GSL season 3. In case you haven't caught it yet, I will refrain from revealing the winner. The results are less important than the sentiments being expressed by many members of this fair community leading up to, during and after this seasons climax; the general thrust of that sentiment being that TSL Rain just didn't belong here. Some people agreed, others disagreed and it was all very passionate.Let me back up for a moment. Though I enjoyed a lot of SC1 and BW in college with friends, I did not follow the pro scene of that game at all. I have much more history with the professional Street Fighter scene. I have only over the last 7 months starting with the SC2 beta, become interested (and quite engrossed) in the culture of the professional StarCraft scene. A lot of what I am reacting to here, and why I pose the question in the thread title comes from the great differences I see between the SF scene and SC scene.I have detected an on-going trend within our community of feeling that the best players are quite often, not the ones winning. It makes sense that in a game of limited information that there may be perceptions from casual gamers that some wins are "cheesy" or just plain luck, but the more dedicated, educated players know enough to know that isn't strictly the case so I don't find that to be terribly damning.What is a bit off putting for me, given what I am used to in the culture I know (that of Street Fighter) is that even at the level of TeamLiquid veterans, which I would classify as the educated enthusiast, comparabale in SF to the Shoryuken or iPlayWinner community, there remains a strong sentiment that players of lesser skill can beat players of greater skill. Not only beat as in grab a freak win off them, but consistently beat players above their skill level in the order that they are able to outlast 2,000 other contestants to play in a game that if they win will net them $87,000 dollars. This concept simplyexist in the SF world.In the SF world, the best of the best are nigh unbeatable gods who can only be challenged by other members of the pantheon. Even among them there is a pretty clear heirarchy. As an example: Daigo Umehara is as close to untouchable as we have. The number of players who can take even a single match off him would fiton one hand. He is in the middle of a slump right now. This year, 2 people actually beat him in a Bo3. Both of the ones who did it are top,players whose ability is unquestionably extremely high. This guy travels the world playing in tournaments as a living. Losing 2 Bo3's inside a year is a slump. Process that.While listening to the State of the Game podcast a couple of weeks back, I think it was inControl or Nony who said (they were discussing the whole MLG Extended Series debate) that even the best players win 70 to 75% of their matches. I am paraphrasing, but one of them said something to the order of:"If FruitDealer hopped on the ladder, on any given night random diamond player #5 has a decent shot at beating him, maybe with a unique build, or a strange timing. Maybe in a tourney setting where it was Bo3 Fruit would figure the guy out and come back and win, but in a given match one of the best players in the world can lose to someone who isn't one of the best players in the world."Again, paraphrasing, but this is what was said by a professional SC player. This is not, in my experience a rare sentiment amongst the professional community. While I admit it isn't the case that if a pro says it that it must be inarguably true, the words of the people doing this for as long as the last 13 years in some cases must have SOME merit.Artosis was very vocal about how weak he felt BitByBit's skills were. Yet he made it through qualifiers (something guys like Tester haven't managed since season 1), knocked out Haypro and got all the way to Ro16 in the biggest, most competitive tourney SC2 has.Right before Ro8, inControl was asked to make a prediction about who would win in NesTea vs Rain and he basically said Nestea was supposed to but that he had a bad feeling he wouldn't. He was right, Rain went all the way to the big dance.In the same conversation MarineKing came up and IdrA said one of the ballsiest, most honest things I have ever heard a pro say about one of his contemporaries, again paraphrasing:"MarineKing hasn't earned/doesn't deserve a single thing he has gotten."Woah! Even more "woah" is that despite IdrA's infamy as a QQer, no one raised a point of contention with that statement. In fact Artosis concurred and said that MarineKing has to stop winning with the style of play he uses, because if he doesn't it may really prove that the marine is actually broken.I re-iterate: These are professionals. They are not 12 year olds talking out their ass about things they know nothing about.So in light of all these sentiments, which in the pro-gaming community I am more familiar with do not exist in any way shape or form, do you, the players and community members believe that:1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era?2. In an appropriate percentage of situations SC2 rewards the more skilled player with victory?I am fully aware that this may all be par for the course. But again, while say Super Street Fighter 4 isn't totally 100% balanced to the tee, I rarely if ever hear from that game's enthusiast or professional community thatwin is less than 100% earned. I am willing to accept that the nature of these two competitive scenes may just have different dynamics. I want to know if its just that, or if you believe, for one reason or another, that SC2 is not rewarding skilled players acceptably.So just a simple addition to the discussion since my initial questions have been well mined at this point:We seem to have established that the state of things is to be expected, based both upon the win percentages established by BW, and on the idea that a limited information game will always have a higher degree of volatility and built in "randomness". A great majority of you feel this is all natural and that a degree of it will work itself out os the years go by and the game gets figured out. Great.Going hand in hand with this is the notion that you all largley share that the moaning in the forums as well as the opinions of some pros such as IdrA, iNcontrol, Artosis and others is mostly baseless. Most of you seem to believe that despite their experience, and the likely fact that they understand as you do, that there is a degree of built in variation and that the game is still young, they are more or less over-reacting, whining or otherwise QQing. This plays in to my earlier example of American Football.The players aren't sages, they are people. They can, and will deride fellow players whose methods they have issue with regardless of whether its valid or fair. I am not calling this a bad conclusion. Quite to the contrary, some people feel this kind of competition, trash talk and derisiveness is an important element to making esports compelling entertainment in a similar way as traditional sports.So my question in light of this fact is, who ARE the sages? Who are the objective keepers of peace? the voices of reason who look into the camera and tell us who is just being a big baby and who is speaking the truth? In traditional sports it would be analysts, tv commentators and such. But our esport is so young, even with BW considered, that the people in those roles are also more or less still players caught up in the thick of things.Someone has to be the voice of reason. If I am to understand the feedback here, even respected pros like IdrA, Artosis and iNcontrol don't qualify as authorities on the matter of what is and isn't good for the game. So who guides the player base then? The pro team coaches? The forum users? The players themselves? It's clear there is a pretty unhealthy divide in both the fanbase and player base about what "skill" is and what it means to "deserve" a win and how the game is "supposed" to be played. This doesn't seem very healthy for the game's future. Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?Just to further clarify, I brought SF into the discussion more as a contrast of the communities and relative win percentages of the best players. I did not mean to imply the two genres were similar and should have similar results. Sorry if it came off that way.This is actually tantamount to why I brought the SF community into the picture. In the SF community, everyone thinks that the person who wins is the best.....because they won. Daigo is the best.....because he wins the most. In that sub-culture, the definitions of abstract concepts like "skill" and what being "the best" is are universally agreed upon. The guy who wins the most has the most "skill" and is "the best"As the last 13 pages of this thread prove, no such certainty about how those terms are defined exists in the SC2 community. Some people agree with IdrA's statement about MK, others think its ludicrous and borderline ignorant. Artosis was complimenting/deriding Terran players by describing how dissimilar/similar their playstyle was to BitByBit's. I was just going through my twitter feed and found this gem from Day9:"The GSL: where Koreans play terribly and cheese everytime, shaking their heads when they lose as though it was a close game!"I think Morrow made a good point about what the common thread here may be: i think the reason older starcraft 1 talk so much about who is real players and who are just abusive ppl who dont deserve wins is that they come from sc1 where the game was pretty much figured out so so much came down to detail scouting macro micro mechanics just overall playing beautifully perfect and calculated. when they see players come to top 4 without having an astonishing macro or wellprepered gameplan or perfected gamestructure they cant really approve too much of it since that was a sign of weak and cheesy players in sc1





All these pros I am hearing deride some of the successful SC2 players have BW in common. They are used to a "figured out" game. As many people in this thread have pointed out, SC2 is not figured out. It also occurs to me that these BW pros may never have had to play the game professionally before it was figured out. Vets feel free to correct me, but it is my understanding that the SC pro scene didn't really develop on a large scale until several years after BW and some fairly extensive patching. This would be significant in that no one was playing (or watching) with money on the line until the game was stable.



The current scenario is vastly different. SC2 had a pro scene while it was in beta testing. While I am sure BW's metagame evolved over time it sounds to me like there was never really a time where pro players felt completely in the dark or blindsided by new, extremely difficult to beat strats. SC2 on the other hand is growing up, starting from infancy, on camera with people all over the world watching and playing for incredibly large cash prizes. What's worse, most of the people watching and playing it have a pre-formed idea of what "skilled" play looks like and what they are seeing now couldn't possibly have any resemblance.



I guess it's no wonder the community is so divided on this topic.





**UPDATE 3**



On December 21 2010 01:29 Flarefly wrote:

Show nested quote +

On December 18 2010 22:35 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:

Who, if anyone at all, is going to be responsible for resolving this growing rift if it's not going to be respected pro players?



The closest I have seen is day9, he always comes to the table with the least bias imo. He also isn't in the thick of things as you mentioned earlier, he is mainly a commentator/analyst of sc2. It seems like most players respect his advice also, Huk even thanking day9 at one point for some help he had given him. Not sure how long it will take to get someone of day9's caliber to come about, or if it will even happen. It would be cool to get more people analyzing games like day9 does, but it seems rare for someone with that much experience and skill to focus more on the community aspects of the game than playing the game pro.



Hopefully this is what you were looking for with the last question in your post :-) The closest I have seen is day9, he always comes to the table with the least bias imo. He also isn't in the thick of things as you mentioned earlier, he is mainly a commentator/analyst of sc2. It seems like most players respect his advice also, Huk even thanking day9 at one point for some help he had given him. Not sure how long it will take to get someone of day9's caliber to come about, or if it will even happen. It would be cool to get more people analyzing games like day9 does, but it seems rare for someone with that much experience and skill to focus more on the community aspects of the game than playing the game pro.Hopefully this is what you were looking for with the last question in your post :-)



Yeah, I agree totally, he is one of the only glimmers of hope I see. The problem is that Sean is just one person. Also, if these feelings in the community end up being due to something Blizz deems a systemic problem with the game that needs fixing, then no matter how positive an influence Day9 is, the ball will be in Blizzard's court at that point. But given that the only right way to patch a game is carefully and incrementally, one must wonder how long it would take for them to fix such a problem while avoiding breaking other parts of the game.



And I get it, it took years for BW to be balanced to the point where it was perfect for competitive play so if we are worrying about this 5 months after release we are being short sided, I know. The difference is we don't have 4 years to get it perfect for competitive play. We had until late July, because the pro scene was pre-built and reay to go nearly from day 1.



My concern is that if the community is devided and it doesn't get resolved relatively soon, either through patches (IF this is in fact even a balance issue) or through a pardigm shift in the community whereby people figure certain things out and agree upon what constitutes"skill", the games professional scene will flounder. I just don't want to see that. Its a great game and a wonderful community and I want to see it around for a long time.







**UPDATE 4**



All these pros I am hearing deride some of the successful SC2 players have BW in common. They are used to a "figured out" game. As many people in this thread have pointed out, SC2 is not figured out. It also occurs to me that these BW pros may never have had to play the game professionallyit was figured out. Vets feel free to correct me, but it is my understanding that the SC pro scene didn't really develop on a large scale until several years after BW and some fairly extensive patching. This would be significant in that no one was playing (or watching) with money on the line until the game was stable.The current scenario is vastly different. SC2 had a pro scene while it was in beta testing. While I am sure BW's metagame evolved over time it sounds to me like there was never really a time where pro players felt completely in the dark or blindsided by new, extremely difficult to beat strats. SC2 on the other hand is growing up, starting from infancy, on camera with people all over the world watching and playing for incredibly large cash prizes. What's worse, most of the people watching and playing it have a pre-formed idea of what "skilled" play looks like and what they are seeing now couldn't possibly have any resemblance.I guess it's no wonder the community is so divided on this topic.Yeah, I agree totally, he is one of the only glimmers of hope I see. The problem is that Sean is just one person. Also, if these feelings in the community end up being due to something Blizz deems a systemic problem with the game that needs fixing, then no matter how positive an influence Day9 is, the ball will be in Blizzard's court at that point. But given that the only right way to patch a game is carefully and incrementally, one must wonder how long it would take for them to fix such a problem while avoiding breaking other parts of the game.And I get it, it took years for BW to be balanced to the point where it was perfect for competitive play so if we are worrying about this 5 months after release we are being short sided, I know. The difference is we don't have 4 years to get it perfect for competitive play. We had until late July, because the pro scene was pre-built and reay to go nearly from day 1.My concern is that if the community is devided and it doesn't get resolved relatively soon, either through patches (this is in fact even a balance issue) or through a pardigm shift in the community whereby people figure certain things out and agree upon what constitutes"skill", the games professional scene will flounder. I just don't want to see that. Its a great game and a wonderful community and I want to see it around for a long time. On December 21 2010 23:16 Kaniol wrote:

So in SF scene there is no thing as "underdog won against the best player in the world because he studied his play a lot and focused on this match only"?

That's quite sad, why even play at all if the player with more skill will win no matter what him and his opponent will do.



In SC if you read your enemy perfectly then you will have chance of beating opponent that has (not a lot better but still) better mechanics/macro/micro/experience than you.





This would be sad were it true, and I am pretty sure we don't want that to be the case in SC2. Do not mis-understand. Everyone loves to see an underdog win through great preparation, hard work and determination against an opponent who may be more mechanically gifted and have more experience. What most people do not really love to see is when someone with ALL those great attributes loses to someone who clearly just practiced a couple of gimmicky builds that haven't been figured out yet.



It's hard to watch someone who has exhibited talent, dedication, skill and understanding lose in that fashion. It's the kind of thing that makes fans walk away.



This would be sad were it true, and I am pretty sure we don't want that to be the case in SC2. Do not mis-understand. Everyone loves to see an underdog win through great preparation, hard work and determination against an opponent who may be more mechanically gifted and have more experience. What most people do not really love to see is when someone with ALL those great attributes loses to someone who clearly just practiced a couple of gimmicky builds that haven't been figured out yet.It's hard to watch someone who has exhibited talent, dedication, skill and understanding lose in that fashion. It's the kind of thing that makes fans walk away. MilesTeg France. December 21 2010 17:31. Posts 73



It's painful to see you guys discuss imaginary numbers. As far as I know no one gave the exact win percentage of Daigo, and to be intellectually honest we'd need his win percentage from 4month after the release of SFIV. I don't think anyone was dominating at the time.



What I do remember, is that there was an ocean of mediocre Sagat players who constantly did well in tournaments. Eventually the matchups were figured out, and now they are not even remembered. Which is exactly what will happen to Rain.



As for the "any high rank player can beat Nestea online" argument, there were a lot of people showing videos of themselves beating Daigo...





It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has been bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun).



I have to totally agree with you about the first 4 months of SF4. So many scrubby Sagat players. Not that I think Rain deserves to be categorized similarly, but I hope the concerns being highlighted in this thread fade away the same way all those mediocre Sagat players did.



As far as people showing videos of them beating Daigo in an arcade, I believe you are actually referring to the vids from the first couple of weeks the game was out in arcades. I did see those vids. Like you said, those first few months were the wild west. That kind of stuff stopped happening real quickly.



Anyway, I don't mean to derail with SF discussion. Again, I don't think anyone (myself included) wants to see the same statistical level of dominance from one genre occur in another. The real purpose of bringing SF4 and Daigo into the discussion is because no one in his community thinks he doesn't deserve his wins and no one who beats him is seen as a lesser player who just got lucky. On the contrary, if you beat Daigo Umehara, the crowd errupts in ecstatic cheers and your name will be remembered for the rest of the year. And not because they hate Daigo, because they don't. They cheer because it's exciting to see an underdog find a way to have a revelation and truly play beyond the level they thought they could and beat a true master.



Right now, no one seems to find upsets in SC2 exciting or entertaining. Warranted or not, when Rain beat Nestea he felt compelled to apologize because of the outrage expressed by the community. When someone beats Daigo, the crowd errupts into an exhalted mob scene. Someone beat Nestea and people shook their heads and wrote angry message board threads. I think we can all agree thats a problem. It is a hard fact that he was not beaten in tournament play stateside by anyone through the duration of vanilla SF4. 2 people beat him in Bo5 money matches in that time frame. In the SSF4 era he has been bested in single tournament competition 4 times, which was considered unprecedented by the community. His current documented win% in the newly released SSF4AE is 86% competing in the highest class arcades in Japan and using one of the new characters who obviously haven't been figured out yet (Yun).I have to totally agree with you about the first 4 months of SF4. So many scrubby Sagat players. Not that I think Rain deserves to be categorized similarly, but I hope the concerns being highlighted in this thread fade away the same way all those mediocre Sagat players did.As far as people showing videos of them beating Daigo in an arcade, I believe you are actually referring to the vids from the first couple of weeks the game was out in arcades. I did see those vids. Like you said, those first few months were the wild west. That kind of stuff stopped happening real quickly.Anyway, I don't mean to derail with SF discussion. Again, I don't think anyone (myself included) wants to see the same statistical level of dominance from one genre occur in another. The real purpose of bringing SF4 and Daigo into the discussion is because no one in his community thinks he doesn't deserve his wins and no one who beats him is seen as a lesser player who just got lucky. On the contrary, if you beat Daigo Umehara, the crowd errupts in ecstatic cheers and your name will be remembered for the rest of the year. And not because they hate Daigo, because they don't. They cheer because it's exciting to see an underdog find a way to have a revelation and truly play beyond the level they thought they could and beat a true master.Right now, no one seems to find upsets in SC2 exciting or entertaining. Warranted or not, when Rain beat Nestea he felt compelled to apologize because of the outrage expressed by the community. When someone beats Daigo, the crowd errupts into an exhalted mob scene. Someone beat Nestea and people shook their heads and wrote angry message board threads. I think we can all agree thats a problem. He is........they call him........none other than........the one........the only........