On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
You're still missing the point. Correlation of ELO curves does NOT mean games are equally easy. If it does, prove how it does. As you are the one making the claim that it does, the onus is on you to prove how two ELO curves from the top pros of a particular game have anything at all to do with the difficulty of the game.
On September 18 2012 14:39 -_- wrote: I feel bad for you. I'm not insulting you, I actually feel bad for you. You worked hard on something, you put lot thought into it, but because of your myopic focus you wasted hours working on something that is clearly wrong to someone who actually takes the time to carefully read it. Of course, most people won't. SC2 fans will see a block a text, a couple of images, a few well-formatted sentences and let your post confirm their bias.
Here's where you make your crucial mistake. And I quote: "One of the most obvious ways determine a skill curve is to look at the win percentages of the top players. Can the top players differentiate themselves from the masses? Presumably, the higher a top player's win percentage, the greater the skill curve in the game."
This is, of course, very wrong. It's wrong for many reasons. I tend to think you realized what a gigantic mistake the colored portion of the quote was. That's why you prefaced it with a presumably. Sadly, you decided to back up that weak premise with statistics, observations, and thousand of words. Considering your choice of words, I doubt I have to even attack your hypothesis myself. You can. And frankly, you should. Your post had some interesting points, quite a bit of solid research, and was presented well. Don't be too proud to admit your mistakes. However, in case you won't, here's a thought experiment for everyone reading.
Imagine there are two games, A and B. A is a perfect game, as defined by the author. B is easy game, as defined by the author. In game A, all serious players play a 12 hours a day according to a rigid schedule. As you would expect, all the players get better. They all reach a high skill level, and the players are pretty even. A few players are more talented, or manage to sneak in an hour or two more a day, and win more often than everyone else. In game B, many play about 4 hours, some other play 8, and a very few play 12. As you would expect, the few hard workers would beat the others regularly, even though it's an easy game.
But that's not the only example. The fact is, the win percentage of top players against 'less skilled' or 'equally skilled' players does not show hard the game is unless the game is trivial. Players of one game might be more or less talented. They might practice more or less. Players in one game might have hugely superior environments to their competition, while in the other game everyone is on an equal playing field. Unless the soft cap can't be moved, those, and many other things, could explain the variations in win rate.
To conclude: 1) Your post was (SERIOUSLY) good, except for the flaw which invalidated everything and 2) I have no comment on whether BW or SC2 is harder.
Actually, you've made a good point. The whole OP relies on a very important presumption, and it's one that L3gendary brought out with his CoD4 example too. You can get the same separation of win rates in an easy game if there are too many unequal practice regimens. Perhaps none of the top 39 players (or only a small group of them) really push their human limits in practice. Perhaps the practice environment is insufficient... there are plenty of NA pros that complain about the lack of difficulty on the NA ladder.
Those are legitimate concerns that could affect the results. However, considering the team-house environment in Korea and the full-time practice regimens that ESF pros are on, those problems likely don't exist in the SC2 pro scene. The very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits. The addition of the Kespa pros will further ensure that the limits are being pushed.
As I've mentioned multiple times, there is a possibility that the Kespa pros will hit the soft cap after a year or two while the ESF pros couldn't. I would put that in the doubtful category, but it is a possibility. In any article like this, there are assumptions that have to be made and the assumption that the very top of ESF pros are putting in massive amounts of effort is one of those assumptions. It's one of the reasons why I didn't just end with top 39 vs others. I compared the top 39 vs each other because I wanted to see if at the very tip top, where $100,000s are on the line, if the players could still separate themselves.
For the time being, they can do it just as much as the Kespa pros did towards the end of SCBW. With that said, the purpose of this blog was to both arm SC2 fans with information to defend their game against an ongoing stream of insults, and hopefully show the BW fans on TL that SC2 is a game worthy of respect, even if they don't particularly enjoy it. Sadly, the second part has mostly not happened.
1) Every ESF player who has experienced both KESPA and ESF house says KESPA players practiced much harder. For example, Idra has said it in essentially those words. So, I don't think it's fair to say at "the very top of the Korean SC2 scene almost assuredly pushes close to the human limits."
2) I feel like you're saying that practice regime is the one caveat you have to make. There are so many other reasons why win rates could be similar! For example, what if one player has high win rate in a perfect game because he practices harder, while in an easy game one player has a high win rate because he has a support staff that researches the strategies of his opponents and he has build order advantages in his games!
On September 18 2012 14:52 Limelights wrote: I would like to make a point against the 'a D+ BW player is high-diamond in SC2' argument: only average to above average players even knew about iCCup, it wasn't something Blizzard advertised on the game so there's automatically a large amount of players not on iCCup. We can also assume that most iCCup players are above-average on B.net.
iCCup took a small amount of the best battle.net players and threw them into the large D- to A+ ranking system. From there minor differences in skill and strategy created the divisions.
In Starcraft 2 there is no seperate ladder system, a much larger player pool, and less ladder divisions (7 compared to iCCup's 13). All of the above-average players are shoved into just two leagues, Masters and Diamond.
I bet if we took just the Diamond, Masters and GM players and threw them into their own ladder system we would see the ladder divisions being filled. My point is if we took that D+ BW player and put him into his own ladder system along with the rest of Diamond, Masters and GM he would be silver or lower, which is equivelant to iCCup's D+.
Actually, compared to all the players that play starcraft BW, ICCUP has the lowest skill level of all the servers. When we lump all the players from Fish, Brain, West and ICCUP together, someone that is D+ on ICCUP would probably be the lowest group of players, or Broze in Sc2 terms. Somone that is B- on ICCUP (very good already), is probably slightly above average if they go on a server like Fish.
Yes, this would be a different, but very reasonable, definition for how easy a game is. The problem is, how do you define competent and competitive? Is having the mechanics to do what you want to do the defining feature of being competent and competitive? If so, Chess must be one of the easiest games in the world. Yet, few would agree with that assessment. I think a lot of the replies have a huge BW bias in how they define competent and competitive. And that bias centers completely around the mechanical difficulty. Yet, if you remove the words "Starcraft" from a game, they're able to get away from their bias and accept a game like Chess as difficult for reasons other than mechanics.
I don't think it's hard to define. I don't think you need to bring in mechanics or the particular functions of each game you talk about either. It is simply the amount of time it takes to compete at either the top amateur level (and from there, the professional level). How long does it take to master Go? How long does it take to master Chess? How long does it take to master BW? How long does it take to master SC2? Where master means you are able to compete with the best and you display a strong understanding of the game (which is defined by how much you know vs how much the best know). If it takes 10,000 repetitions to master an activity, can we not say that if it takes someone 100 repetitions to gain equal mastery in the activity that it is not easier than the one where 100 repetitions is insufficient? Of course my definitions necessarily means that an activity could become more and more difficult as time progresses, as the game grows deeper and the players skills increase. I'm okay with that.
Forgive me for not responding to the rest of your retorts, but I find a drawn argument like this tedius, so I just replied to the one that interests me most and I think is the lynchpin of the argument anyway.
BW pros caught up in 3 months. Do you really believe SC2 players could do the same in BW?
This is just hypothetical heresay, at least the OP tried to provide some knid of analytical evidence. I wouldn't be surprised if SC2 players could go and play well in BW within 3 months, but my opinion doesn't matter. Show me the evidence.
Hmmmm... Evidence?.. MC was called "Flounder", "Suicide Toss" (i assure you he likely won't be proud of either of them) back in Brood War. And he had spent many years training as an amateur. After that, and more years of training in a pro-house, he never got anywhere (look up his BW record). And he where is he in SC2 now?. 3 months? None of your current SC2 pros will be fit to just sit on the bench after 3 months.
I pretty much quit following TL Starcraft after the last Proleague Grand Finals, after all this time these Starcrap II people still havn't managed to at least accept that their game require less skill? I ll agree with Sawamura, Starcraft 2 is a very difficult game to play. No wonder every single one of my friends quit (both playing n watching).
From where i'm looking, the OP's data and the conclusion he drew from it are completely irrelevant.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wywcp.jpg)
