Ok i thought this had to be pointed out, as i write this blog there is currently only about 100 GM's on SEA and i wouldn't be lying if about 30% of them aren't even active enough to stay as GM. A lot of our pro's (who i won't mention for confidential reasons) have purposely or accidentally dropped out of GM or don't ladder to GM for reasons like...
1. i heard GM's say stuff like you can win like 2-8 points but then lose 20-30 on the ladder which makes spending the bonus pool difficult.
2. For some (or most im not sure what the story is) it takes WAY too long to find a game, some people have to wait 5-10 mins for a game at times cause if the inactive sea GM count and such which sometimes gets GM's to verse bronze players? O_o
3. SEA GM isn't at a high quality level (don't get me wrong our SEA GM players are good) and therefore they just all run away to ladder on NA and or on KR or even EU, leaving SEA temporality or forever.
Theres probably more but this is what i can think about for the moment, i guess my conclusion here, is that is there a way to get SEA GM to be improved number and skill wise? I just find it sad how bad our SEA GM ladder looks, how many guys on KR, EU and NA say how crap and bad SEA GM is it's just sad. Any thoughts from the people that have been or are SEA GM?
It's the wait times and expected skill level. Waiting 5+ minutes for a game that's probably against someone not worth your time is completely pointless. Also the ping isn't even that much better for most Australians then playing on NA or KR. So why play on SEA?
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Reluctant new users of this so called... Twitter- @ROOTiaguz
The only thing that will bring our gods back to us, is an incentive or two to actually get them to ladder ~
I really dislike global play but I don't want SEA dying :/
i find that even being top of GM, i still get matched vs diamonds and low masters most games, and its a complete waste of time, occasionally ill get matched against another top player and have a good match, but most of the games are a complete waste. there isnt the player pool at the top of SEA to maintain a ladder, especially when the only good matches you get are against the people you will play in seal or WCS or ACL.
My issues with playing on Sea are:
1. Wait times, waiting 5 mins for a match every time is not fun.
2. The skill differential between the 'good players (ie. People on teams/gm na/high masters kr)' and the lesser players who are still maybe top 16 gm but they don't provide a challange to my skill level, so its not good practice. As such I/we go on other servers to improve.
I think the introduction of Global Play in HotS may encourage some more people to be more active on SEA. I'm hoping a lot of the Koreans get better ping to SEA than NA so they can just log on and tear some nerds up for a few games when they're feeling bored. This will almost certainly boost the playerbase on SEA by a fair bit. I'm sure plenty of other regions will log on and play a few games on SEA just because they can (now), and perhaps a bunch of them will be fairly active.
Who knows.. guess we'll find out.
___________________________________ eLim | iNFENSUS eSports NA
[TheFavez] mOOnGLaDe, PiG, Nv
I think a big part of the issue is that HotS is so close and (some) people find it more fun to play on the Beta. Also with the introduction of Global play so recently, people are probably still trying that out.
If this problem continues when HotS is released, then we might have a problem, but until then I don't think there is that much to worry about.
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[VB] Rhuubarb.120(SEA) / [VBSEA] Rhuubarb.634(NA) | | My Stream
I played a Grandmaster zerg earlier today (around 10pm.. so not that early) on the SEA server. I got destroyed, didn't really expect any different when I saw favored on the loading screen...
but I feel for the guy, his match history showed wins of +2 + 4 + 8 etc. followed by a -23 so he always seemed to be in a negative for that day unless he was on a ridiculous streak.
It works in two ways, to an extent it not only stops the grandmasters from wanting to queue due to long times and ridiculous point losses but it can also be a detriment to lower leagues queueing into them. Someone new to the game could've been put in a situation like Antelopes and just gave up or go to NA where you often get queued against your own league, so it just furthers the problem with less skilled people filling up GM on SEA and less people even queueing that are in SEA.
Hopefully HotS brings people over wanting to brag about being GM on more servers than just the one.
Just echoing pretty much what everyone has said. I get the significantly lower latency to SEA, but I still choose to ladder on other servers mainly due to:
1. Long Queue times - 3-5min queue times is just frustrating, especially when I'm on a roll to get into the next game asap.
2. Lack of variety of players - On SEA it gets to a point where I'm playing the same 3-6 people in my MMR range. I like practicing against a variety of different players which is the main reason I ladder. If i wanted the same guys I might as well PM them and we'd get more games in by spamming custom games rather than wait for 3-5min queue times.
With that said, IMO with HotS and Global Play starting to mature SEA should become a lot more crowded after March 13.
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