EPT.
Well today I want to analyze and really dissect what good and bad play is, as well as the fallacy of stating people in leagues below GM are "bad".
For some history, we can examine the past replays and VODs of actual "pro" players. Looking back at people like Idra or nestea, for example, Season one saw a LOT of 2 base zerg past 15 minutes. The game was still young and thats okay. A lot of people these days would cite Idra's steady decline in the pro scene as the failure to grow as the game has grown, even though it's readily apparent that in the "macro" stage of the game, he still outclasses just about everyone. But in the early stages of sc2, Idra was using hydralisks vs tanks on high ground (yes, I saw that clip on youtube before it got buried), and was generally 2 basing for quite a while. Contrast it to today's standards, and you get a third base before 10 minutes in standard and before 7 minutes if T or P set the pace for a "macro oriented" game.
That's terrible, right? I mean, 2 base in 15 minutes as zerg. What is he a plat? No, the game was just less developed, or more accurately, the personal skill levels of everyone were less developed. In order to demonstrate what I call the "Skill Entropy Level", I'll provide a nice picture.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/v9UWQ.png)
let's assume that the Red Ring for Protoss and the Black Ring for Zerg have near equal win rates vs each other.
In this case, the Protoss will spend more time trying to execute this build better and micro better with it to try to increase their win rate, instead of scrapping it completely and trying to go for a different build, the blue ring. The concept is "if it isn't broken, don't fix it". I think this may also be a reasonable explanation for what many perceive as Idra's "failure to adapt". Of course, this isn't completely true, as metagame would never progress if people didn't push the limits, however, when something does work, there's a large resistance in the individual to try something new. that's why it took so long for zerg to figure out infestors. that's also why it took so long for protoss to figure out immortals. Both infestors and immortals had the same problem; they weren't used because they were considered subpar. After a buff, people start trying to use them, and then realized they were actually good units. There were actually Protosses complaining about the fact that immortals would run around aimlessly behind their army, even though the design of the immortal was to be in front and soak damage along with zealots, at least in concept, and that their complaints could be fixed with micro and better positioning. The range buff was mostly aimed against 1-1-1 anyway, to lower the kiting issue, the way phoenix were recently given an upgrade buff to make them kite mutas the way 1-1-1 could kite zealot/immortal pre +range nerf.
Essentially, people settle around a set of variables that work reliably enough. Entropy. The opposing effect is people pushing the metagame, and these people are the ones who become "pro" or at least GM. Lower level players rarely ask themselves "how could I win this fight even more by changing one little thing in the unit comp or how I use my current units. If a person is winning, they won't be looking for even more ways to do the same thing: win.
This can all be proven, not only by the relatively slow metagame growth of sc2, but also by the leagues themselves. Here is also where it can also be shown that people who claim league X and under is bad are really stating this without due thought and simply jumping on the bandwagon claims either for personal reasons of wanting to show disdain for that which they cannot achieve, or to make themselves feel more superior. Both plats and masters will say diamond is bad. This can only be accounted for by the previous statement holding true. If we compare current diamond play to Season one, we can see that macro, builds, and unit compositions are similar or actually better than Pro players had in season one (idra with hydralisks vs terran, for example). They actually try to execute 3 base zerg prior to 10 minutes, however. A step up from Pro Season 1 game mechanics.
In addition to this, when I was low diamond in season 3, I watched a few streams of supposed "masters", and I was appalled. There was one particular master player, who, in addition to getting high on stream with his bong, would play the very sloppy 2 base 15 minute zerg vs 2 base colossus. What really annoyed me was that his play was arguably as bad or worse than mine, yet he was master. There were two important things to note about this. First, he had obtained master in the previous season and was grandfathered in by the system. It was almost as if there was a plateau between all diamond and master players' skills in season 3, but some people retained masters because all the diamond were busy taking down each others' MMRs, leaving the master players relatively immune to the possibility of demotion. For an example of this, we can return to the master individual 2 basing protoss. One particular game, between him and another "master" involved two nearly mined out mains, and only one expansion for Zerg and Protoss. For one of the very last fights in the middle, the protoss had 1 colossus, 1 stalker , and 1 sentry, and the Zerg player, the one mentioned doing drugs on stream, left about 9 roaches to die on a field of force fields rather than simply micro them back and wait for the fields to drop so that he could move forward and kill the coloss with ease. Even with this kind of obvious management mistake and poor macro abilities, he still managed to stay master level the entire season. This player has actually stopped playing completely due to the rise in skill level and the fact that they've gotten demoted. We can actually see this on sc2ranks. Many who lived as master players in earlier seasons are being demoted, and a lot of those people quit playing completely because they could not grow with everyone else, and have lost their e-peen position.
The current metagame isnt even close to ending yet. I've got some surprise maneuvers for breaking a turtling terran who is economically behind without actually needing brood lords. It took a lot of fighting with the supply inefficient roach hydra corruptor to figure out how to actually fight an army that tries to base itself around early colossus with lings. Will these work against gm? I'm not sure. But my zvp winrate has turned around so fast that I can't believe how formulaic it has become to beat them. I almost never lose a marine-tank zvt. I'm a currently rising Master level player, but prior to getting the MMR needed to placement match me into master even with a loss, I went in and out of master three times in a single season.
People who have left the game for a while have come back and been demoted many leagues, or struggled to stay in their league or one lower. People, who were master based on good build execution and a lack of actual game knowledge, have gotten the demote boot as players who try to learn and grow are superseding their abilities.
If anything, more than ever, the ranks of sc2 are very representative of skill and abilities now. The talk of X league being "bad" may have been true in earlier seasons and precisely because build orders were more powerful than metagame knowledge, but diamond is nw made up of people who are actually competent. It has to speak for something that a large number of people, starting sc2 later than those who bought the game when it came out, have progressed in skill and understanding fast enough to eclipse these others. How can such people be "bad"?
