I'd like to classify StarCraft 2 in two bi-anna, 2010-2011 and 2012-2013. This gives us 12 GSL Champions in the first biannum, and 9 in the second if we count the OSL WCS KR with it. I don't see a reason not to for sake of this argument.
In the first bi-annum. There were 12 champions, these champions were:
Well, that's 7 technically, because there were obviously repeat champions. We all know the fabled story of Nestea, MC and Mvp rotating 8 championships between them letting no on sequeeze in it until MMA finally upset Mvp to steel the crown from these three legends.
Of the total 9 champion in the second bi-annum, we have:
Well, that's ... 9 technically, I was going to make a story of repeat champions but then I realized there weren't any.
Okay, interesting, let's look at the amount of finalists of the first Bi-annum. There were 24 finalists:
- Fruitdealer - Rainbow - Nestea - MKP - MC - Rain - Mvp - July - Polt - MMA - Losira - Inca - Top - Jjakji - Leenock
15 in total. Our thanks go out for MKP for helping us prove our point. Let's look at the 18 finalists of the second bi-annum. Wait, let's not, let's just tell you that Mvp was the only repeat finalist, beating squirtle and coming second to life. King of Wings baby. Honoruable mention goes to MC for being the other player who was a repeat finalist, but not in the same era.
Okay, let's go to the amount of semifinalists. 48 for the first bi-annum:
- Fruitdealer, Rainbow, Liveforever, Ensnare - Nestea, MKP, Boxer [Rainbow is repeat] - MC, Rain, Chrino the Magnificent, HongUn - Mvp [Nestea, MKP and Jinro are repeat] - July, San, Anypro [MC is repeat] - [San, MKP, Mvp and MC are repeat]] - Inca, sC, NaDa [Nestea is repeat] - Polt, MMA, Top [MKP is repeat] - Losira, Byun [Nestea and HongUn are repeat] - [Mvp, Top, July and Polt are all repeat] - Ganzi, Happy [MMA and Mvp are repeat] - Jjakji, Leenock, Oz [Mvp is repeat]
So the elite clique of the first 48 semi finalists consists of 28 different players.
Okay, let's move to our new generation of 36 semi finalists:
- DRG, Genius, Alive, Gumiho - Mvp, Squirtle, Parting, HerO - Seed, MC, Byun [DRG is repeat] - Life, Rain, Taeja [Mvp is repeat] - Sniper, Hyun, Innovation, Ryung - Roro, Symbol, Curious [Taeja is repeat] - Soulkey, sOs [Symbol and Innovation are repeat] - Maru, Bomber [Rain and Innovation is repeat] - Dear, Soo [Maru and Soulkey are repeat
This leaves us with a total of 27 different players for these 36 semi final spots. I think the numbers speak for thesmelves here what I'm trying to communicate.
As far as numbers go, in 2010-2011 the GSL offered more consistency for the better player.
"But that's just because the game wasn't figured out yet!".
Exactly! a non figured out game gives more opportunities for a smarter player to show his stuff. If a game is figured out you level the playing field. If there are standardized responses to things you don't need a big brain to win. A figured out game provides less of a reward to creativity and skill to shine. Optimized build orders which people can practice day in and day out mean that everyone's macro is closer together. If you give a mediocre player and an excellent player the same build and tell them both to practice it for 2 weeks and then do it, the results of their execution of it will be similar. If you both give them an hour the player with superior mechanics will execute it far better. The entire point of a high skill ceiling is ensuring that everyone plays very far removed from it. Giving people the time to optimize and practice means people are getting closer to the skill ceiling and being better has increasingly diminishing returns.
Maps
Let's face it, the staleness of the current map pool is to blame for optimized build orders, if you can do the same build on every map you can optimize and practice it better. What's more, the current map pool is standardized in a way which goes against making the game difficult. StarCraft II is at is core an economy-based RTS. The decision of when to make drones, when to make units, and when to expand, what to allocate chronoboost to, how many bunkers to build, to eek out that economic advnatage is what defines a good player at its core in StarCraft. The current map pool is designed to make a natural easy. It makes the game easier it lowers the skill ceiling. In 2010, taking an expansion was decision. You would scout your opponent and decide based on what he or she had when to expand. The player who was capable of taking the greediest expo and still defend it, made the correct and fluid decision was ahead economically, the better player got the eco lead.
Anno 2014, taking a natural isn't a decision, it's a blind build order because you can hold it anyway. Maps are designed so that the natural is always safe, you can hold anything with a one gate expand and you can't reactively nexus first. It is therefore impossible to scout and reactively decide just how greedy you want to be. It removes an important decision from the game which lets the better player win. Can we not all remember how HuK took a greedy natural against MKP after scouting the 3 rax all in. He didn't cancel, the growd went wild because he didn't cancel his natural even when he knew what was coming. He didn't cancel because he had the confidence in his forcefields to hold it, his forcefields at the time where second only to MC. And he held it. this is the rewards you reaped back then for being better, for knowing you were better and for being right. How greedy you could be was a function of the confidence in your micro.
Nowadays, you always 1 gate expand and you just cast photon overcharge, there is no skill in that, no confidence in your abilities. Everyone expands at the same time, expanding earlier is no longer a privelege granted to the people with the best reads and the best micro. I expand at the same time as HuK, gold league players expand at the same time as Parting. Expanding early back then said "I have the micro to hold this, come at me.", it isn't any more, anyone can hold anything from a 1 gate expand.
One base all ins
People made naturals easier and in general nulled aggression because they hated to see one base all ins, okay, I can see that, intuitively it makes sense, except it's not what happened. Did 1 base all ins really reduce in frequently? If you neuter aggression, people are going to be more greedy in response, and aggression is as powerful as ever. Why didn't blink all ins completely murder everyone on metalopolis? Does it have to do with a lack of mothership core? Yes, absolutely, but most of all, 1 rax expand gassless expand was rare on metalopolis and required good control to pull of, your opponent just walked a stalker past your bunker and started firing at SCV's. Who came ahead after the early game was a function of decisions and micro, not of build order wins.
You can't noawadays to stop blink all ins say "Okay, I'm just going to play less greedy", because what if your opponent does play greedy, then you're behind. That's what saver naturals force, they not only allow you to be more greedy, they force you to be more greedy thereby not nulling aggression but making it more coinflippy. THere was a time when you could 4gate reactionary if you felt your opponent was too greedy. You went 3gate expo, set up for it and you were like 'Wait a minute, this is too greedy' and you made another gat and attacked. But your natural has to be so early now to economically keep up that you can't do that any more. If expansions are taken later, that means that they are a decision, that means it is a decision not either expand more greedily, or to all in to respond to greed, early expansions are not a decision, they are a blind build order win or loss.
To take it to an extreme, consiuder the savest map ever, an island map giving you a natural. It's a complete build order win there. Consider Arkanoid, you had 3 super safe bases but concordently it's a pure build order gamble. How greedy are you going to be on Arkanoid? If you are not greedy enough you may find yourself behind, too greedy and you might find that one person who decides to just 3 rax all in and break the rocks and kill you. Completely blind.
People say that in a longer game the better player is more likely to win. Yeah, I agree, on paper it makes sense, a longer game, means more decisions, more incremental advantages for the better player. But this is not always the case, consider later WoL PvZ for a great counter example. Long PvZ games game down to 1 critical moment, all the incremental advantages you gathered didn't matter, if both players were maxed and one had a larger bank, it didn't matter it was all about the vortex or lack thereof. In lategame PvZ, both players were effectively always close to 'even', a huge bank was inconsequential compared to hitting the vortex or not.
2base all ins however provided for micro and tactics to shine. You can't call it a coinflip if Parting can do it 6 times in a row and win due to his micro which virtually no Zerg could combat at the time. 2base all ins in PvZ at the time were long 5 minute long fights often where position and small incremental advantages mattered to eventually give the win to one of the players. People often said of balanced maps "Yeah, but they are only balanced because every Protoss player 2base all ins there" I say "So what!", 2base all ins were both more spectacular to watch than 2 players sitting on their arse afraid to engage because they know the game can be over after a single vortex or a missed one, and they also allowed for the better player to shine. I would rather that every single PvZ at the end of WoL was an immortal/sentry all in than that every single PvZ went to the vortex stage which is so much more boring.
Anyone can die
The fact that one base attacks can easily kill you forces you to scout early, if people are forced to scout early the game becomes reactionary early. In 2010/11, remember how afraid we all were? We scouted after pylon for the 6pool or 5 roach rush to react to it because it could kill us easily. We drone scouted because we were so afraid of the 2rax. But even if that never came, we were in our opponent's base, we saw what the opponent did and reacted to it in subtle ways. We saw Zerg was gasless when scouting for a 6pool and we concluded we could take a natural earlier. Powerful aggression doesn't make aggresion more likely, it just forces people to be less greedy but it also forces reactionary play. Blink all ins would not be a problem if every Terran was capable of doing a 2rax expand or get a factory before an expand or start stim and conc and marauders earlier. But if Terran does that now they are behind against a protoss 1 gate expand. If naturals were designed to be less safe and photon overcharge was gone, Protoss can't just 1 gate expand that greedily, they at least have to do it from 2 gasses and sentries. Expansions are taken later, all ins are as powerful as they are now, but the game becomes reactionary.
To be fair
Is this the only reason that there was more consistency in the GSL back then? No, there are other explanations. KeSPA entered the scene, new players were added, some good players moved to other regions. But the numbers are still daunting and hard not to at least consider the possibility that varied maps make the game less figured out and in a less figured out game, the player who is smarter and has better control is more likely to win. Furthermore, if taking bases is harder the player who makes better decisions regarding making them and who has better control in defending them will be allowed to shine more.
I like how the single most monumental overhaul ever of a pro scene in eSports gets relegated to this single mention. This should be the first thing to get analyzed when it comes to this topic before you even start looking at the game and maps. No shit that era was lacking in consistent champions when dozens of absolute machines who are still figuring the game out suddenly jump into the fray and start smashing the established players.
I like how the single most monumental overhaul ever of a pro scene in eSports gets relegated to this single mention. This should be the first thing to get analyzed when it comes to this topic before you even start looking at the game and maps. No shit that era was lacking in consistent champions when dozens of absolute machines who are still figuring the game out suddenly jump into the fray and start smashing the established players.
Because the consistent champions already stopped long before KeSPA entered? KeSPA has not been able to provide a consistent champion themselves and back when the first switch happened, as in, when SC2 was new there were consistent champions?
Arguably, the last of the "consistent" finals was the one between MMA and Mvp, the next one was the Leenock vs Jjakji one which featured new blood in the finals, a trend that continued afterwards. The Kespa switch did not coincide with the end of consistent champions, neither did the WCS hoppers though the latter is a far more plausible explanation. KeSPA has not been able to deliver a consistent champion itself. Rather a string of one hit wonders in the vein of Sniper, Jjakji and Seed, did you know that Roro is a GSL champion? People tend to forget.
The real reason why code S consistency dropped. It even lines up perfectly with your statement that after Jjakji/Leenock the consistency went away. This is why - there was suddenly a lot more player rotation.
On February 17 2014 04:33 Neptooon wrote: The real reason why code S consistency dropped. It even lines up perfectly with your statement that after Jjakji/Leenock the consistency went away. This is why - there was suddenly a lot more player rotation.
It's certainly an argument I had not considered when I made this topic I admit, but I also don't completely buy it. It probably plays a role, but:
- The article mostly considers people who made the semis and their consistency, in either system, if you make the semis you stay in code S. - The article also heavily bases itself on the consistency of the open seasons and the super tournament, it points out how the champions of the open seasons remained consistent throughout, the open seasons featured no seeding system, as did the super tournament the super tournament Ro4 featured MKP, Top, MMA and Polt for instance, Polt was the only person there who was unique in such a high placing in the GSL, MKP was no stranger to high finishes of course and MMA and Top frequently repeated this afterwards - The early GSL Ro32 and Ro16's were Bo1's which is a trade of. Bo1 makes it harder to be consistent as well. - As much as it was harder to fall out of code S, it was also harder to get back in. MC and Mvp fell out in the old system and got back in, as did MMA and MKP.
I once compared the Brood War numbers and Brood War has the same few people (Flash, Jaedong, Fantasy, Zero) in virtually every quarter finals for the last three years of its existence, with on average more consistency even though the format typically gives Bo3 instead of Bo5.
But of course, Brood War also wasn't figured out. The nice thing about mechanical difficulty is not just that you'll have repeat winners that can excel based on their mechanics, but also that as your mechanics get better new ways to play the game open up.
Being figured out is a relative, not absolute matter. That said, BW did exactly what I preach here, fresh map pools with different difficulties in taking a natural. In BW people were not afraid to put things like lowground mains into maps and neutral spells.
It is a lot harder to reach the semis when new blood can actually reach the competition. Also, the super tournament is an interesting example because it was at the time the only tournament where new blood actually got to play code S level players. Let's see what happened in it:
1. Mvp, your beacon of consistency, was beaten in the second round by GanZi, who lost in the first round of Code A in the previous season.
2. Inca, the finalist from the previous season, was beaten in the first round by Ryung, a code A player.
3. NaDa, a semifinalist in the previous season, was beaten by SuHoSin. How did SuHoSin do in the previous season? He lost in the first round of code A.
4. sC, a semifinalist in the previous season, was beaten by Maka, who wasn't even IN the GSL at that time.
5. The tournament was won by Polt, someone whose best result up until that point was ro16 in code S. Polt was also considered a one-hit wonder/fluke at that point, similar to the champions you named later on.
Nestea is the only semifinalist from the previous season who is not in the list above.
This is actually a big reason why the Super Tournament was considered a failure - a lot of the new stars fell to newcomers, which killed a lot of hype. Luckily for me, it stands as a perfect illustration to my point.
On February 17 2014 05:15 Neptooon wrote: It is a lot harder to reach the semis when new blood can actually reach the competition. Also, the super tournament is an interesting example because it was at the time the only tournament where new blood actually got to play code S level players. Let's see what happened in it:
1. Mvp, your beacon of consistency, was beaten in the second round by GanZi, who lost in the first round of Code A in the previous season.
This is true.
2. Inca, the finalist from the previous season, was beaten in the first round by Ryung, a code A player.
No one claims InCa was a beacon of consistency, he was only in the semis once and consequently only listed once.
3. NaDa, a semifinalist in the previous season, was beaten by SuHoSin. How did SuHoSin do in the previous season? He lost in the first round of code A.
Again, only included in the semis once in that list.
4. sC, a semifinalist in the previous season, was beaten by Maka, who wasn't even IN the GSL at that time.
Again only once, everyone knows sC would be greater if not for his lung, but his lung is ultimately part of his strength as it is.
5. The tournament was won by Polt, someone whose best result up until that point was ro16 in code S. Polt was also considered a one-hit wonder/fluke at that point, similar to the champions you named later on.
Polt was also in the semis once in that least.
Nestea is the only semifinalist from the previous season who is not in the list above.
And this is also true.
All the people you mention except Mvp were people who made the semis once, those obviously exist, those still exist today, the point is that there exist more of it today. The consistent "elite" of the time was MC, Mvp, MKP, Nestea and arguably MMA. Those were the people who repeatedly got to finals and semis and those people are very rare now. Apart from that there were also far more people than there are now who got to multipe finals and semis though not quite the streak of people like MC (2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze), Mvp (3 gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze), MKP (3 silver, 1 bronze) and Nestea (3 gold, 1 bronze).
Polt was hated because he mocked Jinro and said that he wasn't that good and got lucky with the brackets. Jinro then proceeded to knock Polt out of the tournament. Polt had pretty good results after his super tournament win though, and nowadays we know he wasn't a one hit wonder. And obviously, if a newcomer wins a tournament and then becomes a repeat winner, that's not evidence for too much variance, just of new talent entering the scene.
Polt never got another win in the GSL though, that's important, GSL is a fundamentally different skill set from weekend tournaments, I'm not saying any is less but there are definitely GSL and weekend tournament specialists. Like, Leenock is one of the best weekend tournament specialists in which he has also been super consistent.
If we're discussing consistency, then I'd say Top 8 finishes are better to look at, to get a clearer picture of this. I looked at some of the data from the second period you're discussing.
If you look at internal consistency of 2013, the second season had 5 of the same quarterfinalists as the first, the third had 4 of the second season's and the fourth had four of the third season's.
Let's return to the whole period you're discussing (2012-2013) and the players named above. Those appearing in three or more of nine quarter-finals are clearly consistent players. So let's look at those who came so far only twice.
* DRG also won an MLG and made two more finals (iirc). * NaNiwa has been to the finals of a Dreamhack, an IEM and an MLG. * Mvp is Mvp. He also won WCS EU once. * SuperNova had placed in a top 8 in the first of your discussed periods. * HerO also won WCS AM, an NASL and a Dreamhack, as well as appearing in the semifinals of another Dreamhack, WCS Asia and an IEM. * Leenock came second in the last GSL of the first period, and has won an MLG, an IPL and a Dreamhack. He also came second at another MLG, as well as reached the semifinals of the 2012 Blizzard Cup. * MarineKing was in four top 8's in the first period and won two MLGs in the second. * Bomber made the semifinals of an IPL and an MLG, and won the Season 2 Finals. * Maru made the semifinals in his last four tournaments of 2013, after winning his OSL.
Of the 2-timers, only RorO could be seen as less of a consistent player, imo.
If we take a look at the 1-timers, then.
* HyuN won a Dreamhack, came second in MLG and HSC and made the semifinals of another HSC, an ASUS ROG and an IEM. * Ryung had been in two top 8's in the previous period, and made the top 8 once more in WCS AM. * Creator won WCS Korea 2012 and TSL4, as well as came in second at WCS 2012. * Jjakji won a GSL in the first period. * Trap made the semifinals of the S3 Finals. * Dear won the S3 Finals and came top 4 at WCS 2013. * First made top 8 in the S2 Finals. * KangHo had been in two top 8's before. * sOs won WCS 2013 and came second in S1 Finals. * Life won two MLG's, Iron Squid, an IEM and the Blizzard Cup. He came second in one Dreamhack. He reached the Ro4 of another Dreamhack, as well as an ASUS ROG. * NesTea is NesTea. * Oz had been in one top 8 before and came top 8 twice in WCS AM. * Puzzle and ByuN had been in one top 8 before. * MMA is MMA, and he won WCS EU after coming top 4 once before. * aLive had been in one top 8 before and came top 8 twice in WCS AM after switching regions. * Genius had been in two top 8's before and came top 4 in WCS EU after switching regions.
soO, Seed, Curious, GuMiho are the ones without anything else of note to add to their names.
I want to say that appearing three times in a top 8 is consistent, that's my subjective line in the sand, thus these players are left as inconsistent:
We can then separate those players into two piles, those who have credentials from outside of the league system you want to discuss, and those who haven't.
game is volatile, that's why there are no consistency. smallest mistakes can cost you the game and the meta changes constantly rendering some of the builds unusable
I think you also need to take into consideration the time duration of the tournaments. The 2011 tournaments were monthly, now it is 3 months.
So let's say you have a dominate player for 10 months, in 2011, they would have had a shot at 10 tournaments possibly making 3-4 finals (ala Mvp). Now, you only have 3 tournaments shots and they might only make 1 finals.
If you look at the international tournaments which happens more frequently (albeit with a smaller top end player pool), you still get a lot of repeat champs, Taeja, herO, HerO, Polt. And even JD, he got into a lot of finals before winning. San came second at IEM Singapore before getting first at ASUS.
If you look at the premier tournament list, you will find that most of the players getting to finals have been there multiple times.
On February 18 2014 01:30 vthree wrote: I think you also need to take into consideration the time duration of the tournaments. The 2011 tournaments were monthly, now it is 3 months.
Not really, it's 2 years vs 2 years and the numbers are proportional, not absolute, in the first two years of the GSL's existence there simply were proportionally fewer different finalist and semifinalists than in the two years after that.
If you look at the international tournaments which happens more frequently (albeit with a smaller top end player pool), you still get a lot of repeat champs, Taeja, herO, HerO, Polt. And even JD, he got into a lot of finals before winning. San came second at IEM Singapore before getting first at ASUS.
These are absolute numbers, not proportional numbers. It's not about if people get to a lot of finals, it's about how many different people, proportionally, fill all the possible spots in the finals. Which I reckon is far lower in international tournaments if only because no one attends them all.
On February 18 2014 01:30 vthree wrote: I think you also need to take into consideration the time duration of the tournaments. The 2011 tournaments were monthly, now it is 3 months.
Not really, it's 2 years vs 2 years and the numbers are proportional, not absolute, in the first two years of the GSL's existence there simply were proportionally fewer different finalist and semifinalists than in the two years after that.
If you look at the international tournaments which happens more frequently (albeit with a smaller top end player pool), you still get a lot of repeat champs, Taeja, herO, HerO, Polt. And even JD, he got into a lot of finals before winning. San came second at IEM Singapore before getting first at ASUS.
These are absolute numbers, not proportional numbers. It's not about if people get to a lot of finals, it's about how many different people, proportionally, fill all the possible spots in the finals. Which I reckon is far lower in international tournaments if only because no one attends them all.
it's still something to consider as in: might explain the outcome. Shorter tournaments favor consistency for (at least) two reasons: it's easier to maintain "form" for a shorter period, like summer of taeja. and the meta has lesser time to adapt to your new playstyle.
EPT
