TL;DR: Blizzard's lack of even basic maintenance and ESL's stupid decisions have ruined the game, so I'm retiring from competitive StarCraft II.
DMs about SC2 will be ignored unless you are in my server/clan, it pertains to SC: Evo Complete, or you want to pay me to do something.

Hello, everyone. HyperONE here.

Chances are, if you're reading this, you play StarCraft II.

Well, I am done with the game. I have had my last straw. I just ran the biggest tournament of my life and the replays for it are gone forever.

This is not just some one-time frustration.

  • ESL will not simply select TLMC finalists for the competitive map pool. Instead, they keep picking garbage non-finalist maps and old, outdated ladder maps. It would be one thing if they were ignoring finalists in favor of good maps, but they are not even just okay.
    • I should stress that the best possible scenario is for a full rotation of all 9 maps in the pool promptly every 6 months or a rotation of 4-5 maps every 3 months. Maps made by mapmakers today are way more attuned to modern play than older ones are.
  • The balance is handled by a committee of self-interested pros with no central design direction. ESL does not have the guts or the brains to appoint someone more disinterested to make the final call on things.
  • It would be one thing if ESL had convictions I disagreed with, but it is worse that their left hand does not know what their right is doing. We had a patch to nerf turtling, and then they went and picked one of the most defensive map pools in the history of Legacy of the Void.
  • Blizzard keeps breaking replays, so casters cannot cast them and players cannot learn from them.
  • Units and maps have bugs that stay in the game for months on end and compromise the integrity of the multiplayer experience for everybody.
  • Maintaining maps and mods is an exercise in futility with how often the servers break and refuse to accept file uploads.
  • Overall, the game is simply not fun anymore, except for those who are interested in watching and playing the same regurgitated "strategies" week after week, month after month, year after year.

I have spent nearly $10,000 on SC2 tournament prize pools, and it has all come to this. Words cannot express my disappointment with the state of the game. What is more frustrating is the number of people who are willing to bury their heads in the sand and accept every single one of these as the new normal. It is delusional to expect all these problems to be fixed overnight, but Blizzard and ESL are clearly not even trying, and grassroots community figureheads say they want change, but none of them have the initiative to do anything truly disruptive. Same map pool, same formats, same everything.

Decisive play and prepared strategies are no longer rewarding, because tournaments have gone off the deep end of simply extracting as many games as possible out of pro-gamers, such as the Master's Coliseum. Having to win three series or play as many as five to get out of the group stage is ridiculous, and so is a double-elimination bracket with so many Best-of-7 series and a Best-of-9 finals, which destroys the point of having increased the map pool size to 9 maps. The only way to win an event like this is to regurgitate the same uninspired macro gameplay, over and over again. This also kills any hope for genuine variance in tournament results, since there is no motivation for Protoss players or pros just below the top echelon to try to win the whole event.

If you can enjoy that, I am glad for you. I hope you continue to enjoy the game you love. But I am not going to be here for it anymore. I am done spending my time and money (money = even more time) on this game.

So, going forward, I will not discuss or have anything to do with competitive StarCraft II, unless:

  • You are a member of my team/clan (or maybe my server). If you are here, then I will always try to make a little time to talk, though I do not promise much besides that. I will continue to support the ambitions of my teammates to whatever extent I can.
  • It pertains to SC: Evo Complete. It is a faint hope, but it is still the last thing left in SC2 that I think can be truly great.
  • You have a job for me, like a map commission. But you should know that I am one of the best at what I do, and I charge accordingly --- I will only work with those who understand and appreciate that.

That means:

  • I will not be organizing or funding any SC2 tournaments, outside of SC: Evo Complete.
  • I will not be providing advice or technical support of any kind.
  • I will not be contributing to Liquipedia or Aligulac pages.
  • I will not be participating in the SC2 community at large. (Though I will probably still talk in a couple places because I can't help it.)

I am open to coming back if the state of the game changes, but I am not holding my breath for it.

Thank you to everybody who has been a part of my SC2 journey for the last 5 years.

Sincerely,
HyperONE

Edit

Pub: 03 Dec 2024 01:23 UTC

Edit: 16 Dec 2024 04:10 UTC

Views: 750