• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 21:00
CEST 03:00
KST 10:00
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Ro16 Preview: Rough Waters8[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Siren's Call8[ASL22] Ro24 Preview: Summer's End9Serral wins HomeStory Cup 2915Serral wins Maestros of the Game 244
Community News
Official StarCraft website teases new content ahead of BlizzCon?101Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20)9Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over3New 3v3 BGH Ladder (and more) on ShieldBattery!46Weekly Cups (August 17-23): Zerg dominate the week6
StarCraft 2
General
Nexon wins bid to develop StarCraft IP content, distribute Overwatch mobile game Balance hotfix patch 5.0.16b (July 16) SC4ALL: II Winner Will Earn a Spot at HSC 30! Weekly Cups (August 24-30): Patches' balance mod takes over September World Ranking: herO leads, Serral climbs
Tourneys
2026 GSTL Announcement Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Stellar Fest TWO the Moon (Dec 16-20) IntoTheTV X SOOP SC2 League : Weekly & Monthly SC2 INu's Battles#20 [BO.9]
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
Nexus Wars 2021 GUIDE [M] (2) Industrial Park
External Content
Mutation # 542 The Ascended Mutation # 541 Binary Choice The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 540 Dodge This
Brood War
General
Official StarCraft website teases new content ahead of BlizzCon? New 3v3 BGH Ladder (and more) on ShieldBattery! ASL22 General Discussion BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Pros React To: Calm's Big Brain Play Vs Mini
Tourneys
[ASL22] Ro16 Group A [ASL22] Ro24 Group F [Megathread] Daily Proleagues Brood War in Budapest ! WORTEX 2026 BW Finals
Strategy
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Odyssey Mineral Stack Saturation Replay Review Process - What do you do? Game Theory for Starcraft
Other Games
General Games
Nintendo Switch Thread Diablo IV EVE Corporation [Maplestory Hardcore] Let's Play~!! General RTS Discussion Thread
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Power Rank TL Mafia Community Thread NeO.D_StephenKing vs This Guy From 1 Million Dance
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine UK Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Artificial Intelligence Thread
Fan Clubs
MarineLorD Fan Club The Creator Fan Club The ShoWTimE Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread
Sports
Football (Soccer) Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 MLB/Baseball 2023 NBA General Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Northern Ireland Global Starcraft
Blogs
F* the Children and Get Off …
TrAiDoS
Dreaming of BW patches (mod…
c3rberUs
Regacy Esports: The Bh…
regacyesports
LOCKPICKING NOOB
LUCKY_NOOB
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 5888 users

The Best Player

Blogs > DepressedOne
Post a Reply
DepressedOne
Profile Blog Joined September 2014
United States190 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-13 11:18:55
September 13 2014 11:16 GMT
#1
Hello everyone, today I'd like to discuss the concept of the greatest possible StarCraft player. I was thinking about this when I remembered a conversation I had with a person I was playing a series of one versus one games with. He played Zerg and the matchup he most had the difficulty playing was ZvT, which is a common characteristic among Zerg players, even the top progamers with very few being zvt specialists and mostly having higher winrates in ZvP historically. He arrived to the conclusion that the ZvT matchup favored the Terran race citing ZvT trends and players like Flash and Nada who had won numerous games against their zerg rivals Jaedong and Savior, Flash especially who had won three consecutive tournament finals over Jaedong towards the end of their rivalry.

His views of game balance reflected his own matchup weaknesses and sometimes it might be the fact that the matchup is imbalanced. Sometimes you may be better at ZvP and weaker at ZvT or the other way around and that may be the way it is. Really though the ceiling limit in my mind had not been hit, it's always theoretically higher than any human could possibly be, and in my mind while top tier pros like Jaedong, Flash, jangbi, Fantasy, etc. were all high performing players far above their human peers they were nowhere near the top of the skill ceiling. When I thought about the concept of the highest skill ceiling player possible I was thinking about how a computer AI could improve on everything that progamers couldn't do perfectly.

Just imagine the possibilities. For example, the Probe has the ability to outrange an SCV while still being able to take it since its attack has slightly farther range. You do this by clicking away from the scv, use the attack command, and quickly move away. A computer AI could be programmed to do this consistently without fail harassing workers while moving away when it's in danger. On different spawning points you will have mineral patches that yield different mining efficiency rates. Computers can determine which mineral patches should be mined from first to optimize income. I remember a BW AI that had top tier Mutalisk control that could take apart 2 full control groups of marines even when stimmed with medics. The destination from point A to point B would be even more efficient, like when a Zerg opens with 12 Hatch a drone will be sent at the exact time it needs to be sent to make that hatchery. The hypothetical highest skill ceiling player would probably take into account hundreds of trivial factors, if not billions that progamers never thought were important that a normal person would disregard as unimportant yet it all matters. I can't think of any because I'm just a human.

There's a thought I have that trying to comprehend a game of the highest skill play cannot be fully grasped. I'd like to allude this to Carl Sagan and his video about the 4th dimension, something just as foreign as the highest skill ceiling player that is in the video below.
.

In the video he talks about the concept of the 4th dimension. He first sets up the scenario of a 2D world called "Flatland" filled with 2D geometric shapes like a triangle or a square. Once a human from the 3D dimension interacts with them the 2D shapes of Flatland become bewildered not able to see the human, only hearing its voice. The human puts down an apple in their land, yet the only thing they see is the very bottom of it in a 2D shape unaware of where it came from. Much like how foreign and uncomprehensible the third dimension must be to a world in the 2nd dimension, in our three dimensional world we cannot fully comprehend the 4th dimension, but we can conceptualize it.

Just like the highest skill ceiling player, a player that would literally make Jaedong and Flash look like D- scrubs, or even hundreds of times lower, we cannot fully comprehend this player, but we can conceptualize it. While marine medic micro may look overpowered in a high level TvZ game what would a high level game look like between two masterful AI's? Maybe there is a threshold that pro level Zerg against Terran has not been able to cross that the highest skill ceiling player has, something without reach with new ways to micro and new ways to deal with mech, a completely different way of thinking and strategizing that top Zergs like Jaedong and Savior were never close to that hasn't been a part of the current Zerg mentality. No one can solidly say which race has the greatest advantage over another in a particular matchup until they've seen the greatest player possible, the imaginary highest skill ceiling player. I wouldn't say games between BW pro amateurs is a fair projection of what players at the highest ceiling would be like. We can only......conceptualize..

*
Me sad.
pebble444
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Italy2503 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-13 11:54:54
September 13 2014 11:52 GMT
#2
what did i run into...

first of all do you know this: http://www.sscaitournament.com/ ? might be interesting, every year theres a competition where people make Ai's to battle each other.

I think that Ai may outshine a human in the micro or macro aspect, but that is it. The computer cannot ever be a good player of starcraft, because the game itself, is not only based on carrying out orders, but on making decisions, decisions which require the player to be human, that is to be able to interpret a situation, and make a decision, based entirely on the situation. ultimatly creative.

Computers are not capable of subjective decision-making; They can carry out a decision made out by math, but thats their limit. The also lack a fundamental ability, which is Instinct, which plays a very big role not only in Broodwar, but also chess and poker alike. magnus carlsen, currently chess #1 player in the world, said in an interview, even do he can make calculations, knowns strategies, odds and what not, his decisions in the game of what path to take or move to make are most of the time carried out by instinct.

also check out "perfect wraith micro" on youtube

Edit: Maybe if there where some bionic being, say half computer half human (other than Flash), who is capable of computer micro and macro, and human decision making and instinct it could prevail. But then theres still the problem on the 2 parts clashing, which part would prevail in decision making? no i am still convinced a computer will never possibly reach a level of "creative thinking" , which sets us apart into the animal world and not in the computer world
"Awaken my Child, and embrace the Glory that is your Birthright"
Birdie
Profile Blog Joined August 2007
New Zealand4438 Posts
September 14 2014 01:26 GMT
#3
Pebble444, it would definitely be possible to make a computer which is a good player at StarCraft, it's just not easy. The problem space of a StarCraft game is very large, which makes it much more difficult for a computer to make the most ideal choice when presented with the billions of possible actions at each moment in the game.
Red classic | A butterfly dreamed he was Zhuangzi | 4.5k, heading to 5k as support!
DepressedOne
Profile Blog Joined September 2014
United States190 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-09-14 22:31:59
September 14 2014 22:31 GMT
#4
uhm maybe not in the near distant future sort of AI. It doesn't even have to be an AI or human, or anything realistic. Just imaginary. It may or may not be realistically feasible to achieve that high skill level, I'm just wondering what a perfect game of starcraft would look like. Pls. Flash? Uhuhuhuh how about the Jang Bang Bi.
Me sad.
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 9h 1m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
SpeCial 171
ProTech152
JuggernautJason45
StarCraft: Brood War
Rain 2349
GuemChi 1712
Yoon 7
Dota 2
monkeys_forever422
NeuroSwarm88
LuMiX1
Counter-Strike
summit1g11695
minikerr233
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox463
AZ_Axe123
PPMD49
Other Games
C9.Mang0340
Maynarde56
Organizations
Other Games
BasetradeTV95
[ Show 11 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH322
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• RayReign 11
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• masondota22236
Upcoming Events
Afreeca Starleague
9h 1m
Leta vs ggaemo
Jaedong vs Queen
GSL
10h 1m
PiGosaur Cup
23h 1m
Kung Fu Cup
1d 10h
Replay Cast
1d 23h
The PondCast
2 days
KCM Race Survival
2 days
Escore
3 days
IntoTheTV X SOOP
3 days
CranKy Ducklings
4 days
[ Show More ]
Sparkling Tuna Cup
5 days
Shopify Rebellion Sundays
5 days
Spirit vs Mixu
Clem vs TBD
RSL Revival
5 days
Replay Cast
5 days
Afreeca Starleague
6 days
WardiTV Weekly
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-09-02
PiG Sty Festival 8.0
Big Dog Cup 2026 Div 1

Ongoing

KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 3
K-JUNGMAN
ASL Season 22
Super Anchor Qualifying S3
CSL 2026 AUTUMN (S22)
Acropolis #5
Acropolis #5 - TRS
RSL Revival: Season 6
Calamity Invitational
BLAST Open Fall 2026
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026

Upcoming

Escore Tournament S3: King of Kings
Acropolis #5 - GSA
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Acropolis #5 - GSB
Acropolis #5 - GSC
SC4ALL II: Brood War
HSC XXX
Stellar Fest 2: Lunar Cup
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
Stake Ranked Episode 6
BLAST Rivals Fall 2026
IEM Beijing 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 5
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
1win Private Club #2
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Play Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #3
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.