Some lessons from the last WCS
As a participant of World 100 (for Ultimate Veterans, world ended in a draw between Ultimate and nVidia), WCS 2015 (for League of Legends, world won by nVidia), WCS 2017 (for High Speed, world won by ...
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Nice analysis. Thank you for sharing.
It blew my mind when you said there were over 100 people in voice chat at the same times. I knew Schaffa had great communication, but would never have thought that was even possible.
Many of the things you mention are the same on all servers, but as you observed with increased competitive levels in the WCS, they are not just extra effort, they are critical aspects.
One big factor that you could add to your analysis: that success attracts talent.
Nobody wants to lose because it is painful and a big waste of time. So top players want to be in a team with other strong players where their chances of success are higher. Schaffa core players are recognized as the strongest team in the game, so they can recruit talent like yourself and other top players without much effort, while other teams have to persuade and put a lot of effort into attracting talent. For WCS, it usually requires developing that talent (rather than recruiting it) in a group that has loyalty as its foundation. Takes years and with each big loss, the game gets to not being fun, accusations of leaders and teammates (negative, downward spiral of feedback you mentioned) gets top players to feel they were victimized by the team and loyalty breaks down, players you have developed leave in disappointment, and starting over seems like a monumental effort that is unlikely to pay off. In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons why Schaffa is the undisputed leader in the game.
The team to defeat Schaffa has to do a better job than Schaffa can do recruiting talent, by having a large group of top talent actively developing additional top talent and concentrating 30 or 40 unknown but true top players into one alliance that blindsides Schaffa so they do not see it coming (along with your insights of pvp, organization, acquiring and adapting to new information, and communication). It will be a huge amount of work for the team that manages to do it. But when Schaffa loses, the same negative spirals will probably happen in Schaffa. Top players will likely start to say the leaders are content and not putting in the effort, or are responsible for bad decisions from the top player's perspective (hindsight type things). Top guys will fall out because they lose sight of victory, making things worse. Many who fall out will be bitter, which brings down morale. Other top players are positive people and are unwilling to put up with the negativity that builds up in the alliance. With the increase in complaints and criticizm and decrease in positive input, the alliance chat becomes more and more negative and players log in less due to it. The score difference to the top alliance gets bigger and the feeling that the loss is imminent keeps building up. There are many petitions and demands from leaders for the players to work harder, but they stop trying to inspire the team to believe in victory, because they do not believe it themselves and are unwilling to lie to their team. Then all you hear are some of the good players (not extreme top) trying to save face by exposing their theories of why them being an awesome player are losing a server. It is always someone else's fault. Blame, blame, blame. That will probably not change in any team. In my opinion it is simply how some people deal with the grieving process of losing.
It blew my mind when you said there were over 100 people in voice chat at the same times. I knew Schaffa had great communication, but would never have thought that was even possible.
Many of the things you mention are the same on all servers, but as you observed with increased competitive levels in the WCS, they are not just extra effort, they are critical aspects.
One big factor that you could add to your analysis: that success attracts talent.
Nobody wants to lose because it is painful and a big waste of time. So top players want to be in a team with other strong players where their chances of success are higher. Schaffa core players are recognized as the strongest team in the game, so they can recruit talent like yourself and other top players without much effort, while other teams have to persuade and put a lot of effort into attracting talent. For WCS, it usually requires developing that talent (rather than recruiting it) in a group that has loyalty as its foundation. Takes years and with each big loss, the game gets to not being fun, accusations of leaders and teammates (negative, downward spiral of feedback you mentioned) gets top players to feel they were victimized by the team and loyalty breaks down, players you have developed leave in disappointment, and starting over seems like a monumental effort that is unlikely to pay off. In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons why Schaffa is the undisputed leader in the game.
The team to defeat Schaffa has to do a better job than Schaffa can do recruiting talent, by having a large group of top talent actively developing additional top talent and concentrating 30 or 40 unknown but true top players into one alliance that blindsides Schaffa so they do not see it coming (along with your insights of pvp, organization, acquiring and adapting to new information, and communication). It will be a huge amount of work for the team that manages to do it. But when Schaffa loses, the same negative spirals will probably happen in Schaffa. Top players will likely start to say the leaders are content and not putting in the effort, or are responsible for bad decisions from the top player's perspective (hindsight type things). Top guys will fall out because they lose sight of victory, making things worse. Many who fall out will be bitter, which brings down morale. Other top players are positive people and are unwilling to put up with the negativity that builds up in the alliance. With the increase in complaints and criticizm and decrease in positive input, the alliance chat becomes more and more negative and players log in less due to it. The score difference to the top alliance gets bigger and the feeling that the loss is imminent keeps building up. There are many petitions and demands from leaders for the players to work harder, but they stop trying to inspire the team to believe in victory, because they do not believe it themselves and are unwilling to lie to their team. Then all you hear are some of the good players (not extreme top) trying to save face by exposing their theories of why them being an awesome player are losing a server. It is always someone else's fault. Blame, blame, blame. That will probably not change in any team. In my opinion it is simply how some people deal with the grieving process of losing.
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