If the players knew who they were matched up against, the games would be higher quality and thus would further enhance the spectating aspect.

+1+1

+1
This is one of the reasons I always liked foreigners better than koreans, so much more personality
Like the Idra vs Huk rivalry, jesus christ, that was so awesome to watch. It's much better to watch two personalities fight rather than 2 nameless machines.

Man you seem mad...calm down? Breath. Maybe participate with some useful input? If you are not capable of debating a topic with valid points and an open mind what is the point of saying anything at all? Calling me a retard doesn't really pertain to the poll, or my questions...it just kind of shows you have nothing relevant to say.



I agree, I guess what would interest me is just one tournament type that hosted blind matches - the fans would know who was playing but the players wouldn't. I'm not suggesting all tournaments remove the "personality", but to see some blind tournaments where they don't have any predetermined plans or forethought to who they are playing, not being able to "prepare" for the player but just prepare to play at their best...not trying to counter anything before anyone even does anything.

While I agree that it gives them personality, rivalry etc, lets us connect and adds mind games and metagames knowing their opponent, it also removes other aspects of the game. Bottom line is that the current tournament system leaves out a lot where a balance could be made with other types of tournaments - knowing who was at the tournament but not who you are playing against for example...playing against a zerg but not sure if it is Idra or Suppy, those kinds of things. It is a different type of mind game - agree with me, disagree, but it doesnt change the fact that it would add a whole different layer to the game, causing the players to take a different approach and changing the types of games that we see...and in those instances removing some of the things that you mentioned that are great benefits to the current system.

This post was edited by Commm on Jan 16 2014 07:49am

FAIR CALLS BRUH.

Like I said, post on TL if you think your idea is so foolproof

you will get some actual feedback from people who can put it in words much better than I can.

This post was edited by Ferrite on Jan 16 2014 08:09am

It wouldn't add a layer, it would take a layer away. There would be a slight guessing game, yes, but for the most part the games wouldn't change, and we'd miss out on all the nifty things that make us go "wow that's awesome!"

Games would more commonly be played standard, as opposed to interesting and thoughtful builds. We've seen standard play to death. The things that I remember are when players innovate the game, and they do it against a specific player because of a specific aspect of their game. For example, do you remember the first time in WoL that a Terran rallied his marines to where an opposing player sent his overlord? It blew everyone away. The casters were wondering why he's sending his marines out into the middle of nowhere, and then suddenly he gets an overlord snipe due to the unique scouting path of that player. While that's (for the most part) vanished, it changed the way the game was played for a few months after the fact. It's not the perfect example, but it's the first thing that came to mind.

This is exactly the direction I do not want Starcraft to move in. Everything is already too stagnant--that's why the game is becoming less interesting. There's become really ONE way to approach most of the matchups. TvZ is ALWAYS marine mine, TvP is ALWAYS bio, Zerg is 90% muta in every MU. By making the tournaments blind, we remove another layer of innovation that players can use, and by doing so, constrain the metagame even further down to a very slim number of builds. Players emulate pros, and if the pros do something wild (even if the players don't know WHY), the player base will do it for awhile and things will be learned and the game might develop another style. All of this is contingent on the pros evolving, however, and when you're basically putting them into a barcode ladder situation, where they're just going to blindly do the standard build, we're not going to see that kind of excitement, that kind of thought.

So while this would be fun as a one-time thing for a gag tournament where the real excitement would be watching players in the post-game guess who they were playing against, it's not conducive to the long-term success of Starcraft as a franchise, nor is it adding any element of excitement other than some slight obscurity that already exists, to a point, due to fog of war.

Good points.

I guess it's the difference between watching a stream (partial blind match anyway...very unlikely that someone has studied the other player and planned to counter) and watching a tournament; streams can be more interesting than tournaments even without the commentating due to the extra elements, even if they are missing others.

This post was edited by Commm on Jan 16 2014 05:09pm