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THE GOAT
People watching any form of competition will at some point in time ask themselves the question: "Who is the greatest player of all time?" It's an interesting topic for sure, it tries to paint an accurate picture of the complete competitive history and crown somebody as the king of it all.
Now you will probably think, "well we all know who the goat of sc2 is, it is Mvp!" It is an opinion which is almost indoctrinated into the sc2 community. One of the greatest reasons people believe this has to be stuchiu's big article series greatest players of all time.
It's probably the go to list in sc2 when somebody brings up the GOAT topic. It was posted about two years ago though, it is certainly time to revisit this question.
A new attempt
Personally i subscribe to the idea that we should create a point based system to tackle this problem. Why? Because it stays consistent and doesn't allow for any bias to shine through (apart from setting up the point values). A GSL win will always be worth the same amount of points (with some caveat i mention later), a ro16 appearance as well, etc.
Some people might say that not every GSL tournament run is comparable in difficulty and i would agree with that. But i also think that it's basically impossible to accurately measure the difficulty of each and every run and weigh it accordingly. Stuchiu certainly said he tried and i applaud him for his effort, but he is still human and we all are biased one way or another. This is why i think a consistent point system is superior atm.
The obvious problem
The tournament circuit in sc2 was and still is split. Not every player competes in the same tournaments regularly. That was especially apparent at the time we still had weekend tournaments going on. A player like Taeja basically participated in every single one while most of the top kespa players didn't really attend these tournaments on a consistent basis. At the same time players like Taeja didn't compete in korean tournaments like GSL, SSL or Kespa Cup. I am sure you can see the problem here, it is really hard to compare results. Note: I will only look at offline events, i think that is reasonable.
Why i made this blog
I still want to try though and i need your help/input. While in the end i will make all the decisions i still think it is valuable to see what the community thinks. How should someone weigh the different tournaments? Let's just say a GSL win is worth 100 points, how much points should the second place get? How much the ro4, etc.
What about comparing a GSL to a Blizzcon or another weekend tournament like Dreamhack. Then there is also the question if tournaments held before the kespa switch should count as much as competitions being held after it.
I think it is important to look at the whole picture, a player shouldn't be judged solely on the amount of titles, all of his results should count for something. This includes proleague results (iirc stuchiu's list neglected that part, imo a flaw at the time).
So how should someone include proleague into all of this? (a recent blog might help with this question)
If you are just somewhat interested in the GOAT question i want your input on this. Hopefully we can have an interesting conversation and it will help me decide how to set up the point values for each important part of the puzzle.
Thanks for the read, see you in the comments!
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Yes i know about it, but it doesn't really answer the GOAT question i think. While i believe a sophisticated enough elo system might be the best approach, i don't think aligulac is just that. It's certainly interesting to look at though. (especially elo inflation due to the different regions/online play)
What i am interested in is the opinion of people on how to rate different tournaments against each other. Also how to rate say a ro16 appearance against a ro8 one, etc.
As i said, at the end of the day i will decide it, but i am open to look at other opinions and arguments.
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I can help by completing the second place: it's soO.
I don't think you can have a perfect GOAT ranking. But maybe you can create some kind of "bonus" for "pressure" (not too sure how that might show...) and one for how stacked a tournament is (like if a player's rating is 100 and he has been facing 80-85 players he would gain more than one who is 100 and has been facing 50 pts players).
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Well as i said, i would love to have it be more nuanced. But i think without a sophisticated enough elo system it is basically impossible to really accoutn for the difficulty of tournament paths.
I basically assume it kinda evens out in the end. A player who was a bit lucky to make it into the ro4 once might have a bit of worse luck next time, etc. Ofc defining how many points somethign is worth is still subjective, but that's the reason i asked the community for some input.
About the "bonus for pressure", i think there really is no way to meassure that at all so i won't do something like that. The whole point of my approach is to only take "objective data" = results and apply it consistent for everyone no matter who it is (for example i would probably overvalue TY simply because he is one of my favorite players, but if i simply have a strict system in place this cannot happen)
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Canada2764 Posts
Stuchiu's list is almost entirely accurate through tournament results; if you want to edit it for proleague, you probably only have to make one or two changes, since most big-name korean pros aren't significantly better than one another at proleague to make a difference. I've been over the discussion of 'should we revisit the list?' with stuchiu before, and he agreed that there's very few changes if any changes at all. All of the big winners of 2016/2017 (ByuN, Dark, Stats) are players who aren't all that present on the list. I suppose you could argue for some sort of an honorable mention to ByuN, and you could argue for Dark deserving a spot over Leenock and soO moving past MarineKing, but it's all really semantics. There's not enough big changes to earn a new list.
EDIT : Also, you can argue for personal bias affecting certain decisions, but a points based system will just be entirely incorrect. In a points based system, sOs defeating Ruin and Panic to advance to the Ro16 in 2014 S1 is equal worth to PartinG defeating TY and Stats in 2014 S3. Also, you run into the problem of - if all GSLs are equal, do you factor in 2010/2011 the same way? Does Lyn defeating TheWinD, BanBans and Ensnare to reach the Ro8 result in the same points as INnoVation defeating ParalyzE, MyuNgSiK, Stats and PartinG? How do you decide how many points a tournament is worth? If different tournaments are worth different amount of points due to having different participants, what's the purpose of points, as everything is subjective anyway? Can personal bias not be present in the decision to have 2011 worth X points and 2014 worth Y points? If all the GSLs are worth the same amount of points, wouldn't you run into an awkward situation where someone like NaDa or FruitDealer or anypro who is clearly not a GOAT-tier player ends up being compared to someone like Maru, due to having more GSLs to participate in?
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I think the list is somewhat flawed simply because he tries to judge tournament runs. As i said before i think it's not possible for a human being to be unbiased that way. Which is exactly why i am interested in doign it through a point system which is entirely conistent. The hard part is to get the point values reasonable, that's the point of this blog, to get input about that.
And even if i would think that his list is "almost entirely accurate", it still was created two years ago. You say there wouldn't be much change, i am not sure i agree with that. Especially if we include proleague. You basically imply proleague wouldn't matter much compared to individual leagues? The blog abotu kespa rankings i posted at leats disagrees heavily with this, there a proleague win is basically worth the same as a win in a starleague. While i a not sure if that is the right evaluation, at least it's a starting point.
EDIT for your edit:
I assume that it evens out over a large amoutn of data. While it can be argued that if we compare two specific roX results with each other that one was harder than the other, i don't believe it is likely that we get scenarious where specific players always get the short end of the stick. I simply don't think that one player always has the easy road to a certain result, while the other always has the hard one.
I already mentioned that it is surely biased when talking about the creation of the point values. That's the point of this blog though, to have discussion about reasonable poitn values, to look at arguments why certain tournaments should be worth more, etc.
You say it is subjective anyway and that's true to some extent, but there is a difference between having a somewhat subjective point system and judging every single tournament run ever entirely subjectively. The point system stays consistent after creating it, it only values results, the only thing actually objectively measurable.
With stuchiu's approach you run into subjective opinions at every step of the equation: "oh beating that player isn't worth as much because the map pool and balance and he was sleepy that day, yadayadayada".
I think if the point values are somewhat reasonable then this system is superior.
And yes ofc we have to talk about certain topics like "are early GSLs worth the same" or "how many different tiers should there be for weekend tournaments" and other things. Again, this is the point of this blog basically.
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I wanted to do something like this too some time ago but was to lazy to go through with it.
My point system was basically that I divided the tournaments in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3:
tier 1 is Blizzcon, IEM Katowice and GSL/SSL as well as the WCS season finals in 2013.
tier 2 are foreign cups with significant korean participation (most IEMs and DHs)
tier 3 are foreign cups with little korean participation (most HSCs and some other cups)
The one thing I wasn't sure about was how to rank the korean weekend tournaments like Kespa Cup. While on one hand it had the exact same level of players as GSL, Blizzcon etc on the other hand rating it the same would be weird because it certainly doesn't have the same prestige.
Well and the point distribution was basically that a tier 2 tournament gives twice as much points as a tier 3 tournament and a tier 1 tournament twice as much points as a tier 2 tournament.
Same for placements - reaching the finals would give twice as much points as reaching the semifinals, winning the finals twice as much as losing in the finals.
In practice this would mean that reaching two GSL finals gives as much points as winning one final, being 4 times in the semifinals as much as winning the finals, winning 2 IEMs with strong korean participation as much as winning a GSL etc
I think that's fair.
Only problem of course that it doesn't value Proleague results which are imo very important.
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Well we all know who the goat of sc2 is, it is Mvp!
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On July 07 2017 01:07 Soularion wrote:
EDIT : Also, you can argue for personal bias affecting certain decisions, but a points based system will just be entirely incorrect. In a points based system, sOs defeating Ruin and Panic to advance to the Ro16 in 2014 S1 is equal worth to PartinG defeating TY and Stats in 2014 S3. Also, you run into the problem of - if all GSLs are equal, do you factor in 2010/2011 the same way? Does Lyn defeating TheWinD, BanBans and Ensnare to reach the Ro8 result in the same points as INnoVation defeating ParalyzE, MyuNgSiK, Stats and PartinG? How do you decide how many points a tournament is worth? If different tournaments are worth different amount of points due to having different participants, what's the purpose of points, as everything is subjective anyway? Can personal bias not be present in the decision to have 2011 worth X points and 2014 worth Y points? If all the GSLs are worth the same amount of points, wouldn't you run into an awkward situation where someone like NaDa or FruitDealer or anypro who is clearly not a GOAT-tier player ends up being compared to someone like Maru, due to having more GSLs to participate in?
I quote myself from another thread on why the strength of tournament runs shouldn't be compared:
On June 22 2017 06:06 Charoisaur wrote:
But no quality of players beaten shouldn't be counted because you can't quantify that.
Let's take for example Neeb's Kespa Cup victory. Many people say his run was easy because he didn't play vs a lot of big names. What people forget in those cases is that the players he beat may have very well been better players at that tournament than players who have a "bigger" name.
Pet took out herO and also beat Dark in the qualifiers. Trap took out TY and Solar. So just because Pet and Trap don't have as much achievements as other players doesn't mean at all they were worse players at that specific time.
looking only at the names of the players beaten and trying to determine from that how impressive the tournament run is is stupid in a tournament where ALL players have the opporturnity to play in and qualify for.
as for how 2011 runs are measured compared to 2014 runs - I mean of course the skill-level is higher right now but I don't think that's relevant when talking about the most succesful player. If we're talking about the player who has reached the highest peak skill-level 2011 is of course irrelevant but the players back then competed against the best players that were active around that time. Also that the game was less figured out back then can also seen as a plus for the players because they had to innovate more than todays players.
Also under no circumstance Nada, Fruitdealer etc are anywhere comparable to Maru so that's a bad example.
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On July 07 2017 01:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I wanted to do something like this too some time ago but was to lazy to go through with it.
My point system was basically that I divided the tournaments in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3:
tier 1 is Blizzcon, IEM Katowice and GSL/SSL as well as the WCS season finals in 2013.
tier 2 are foreign cups with significant korean participation (most IEMs and DHs)
tier 3 are foreign cups with little korean participation (most HSCs and some other cups)
The one thing I wasn't sure about was how to rank the korean weekend tournaments like Kespa Cup. While on one hand it had the exact same level of players as GSL, Blizzcon etc on the other hand rating it the same would be weird because it certainly doesn't have the same prestige.
Well and the point distribution was basically that a tier 2 tournament gives twice as much points as a tier 3 tournament and a tier 1 tournament twice as much points as a tier 2 tournament.
Same for placements - reaching the finals would give twice as much points as reaching the semifinals, winning the finals twice as much as losing in the finals.
In practice this would mean that reaching two GSL finals gives as much points as winning one final, being 4 times in the semifinals as much as winning the finals, winning 2 IEMs with strong korean participation as much as winning a GSL etc
I think that's fair.
Only problem of course that it doesn't value Proleague results which are imo very important.
Simply doublign the points according to tier and round in a tournament is obviously a simple system. I can definitely see using somethign like that, though it might be a bit too simple. In general i would assume the following things:
Korea is the hardest, most competitive region and pretty much every single high lvl progamer tries to play in every single tournament.
While you say tier two tournaments have "significant korean presentation", what does that exactly mean? At the end of the day most top players in korea didn't enter every tournament, there were some strong ones here and there for sure but the competitive field was still way, way weaker. I am not sure if it is fair to value it half as much based on that.
But that's why i made this blog, to argue about things like that and see what arguments people have for one thing or another.
Proleague results are indeed tricky, the blog i posted about the kespa rating is interesting for that. In the bw days the kespa rating basically valued a win in proleague just as much as a win in an individual tournament. (not 100%, but close enough for the case of the argument).
I don't think this is entirely reasonable for sc2, but it's a starting point.
edit: seeing that you argued against devaluing the older GSLs. Well the argument would be that it happened before the kespa switch. The kespa switch obviously (imo) increased the competitive lvl a lot. New (better) talent, stricter training (especially because of proleague as well), teamhouses being more efficient, things like that.
I would argue that it made it harder to dominate the scene because of that. It's not about later players being more skilled at the game, that's trivial, it's about the scene being more professional basically and thus being more competitive.
On July 07 2017 01:31 Yonnua wrote:
Well we all know who the goat of sc2 is, it is Mvp!
Hehe 
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On July 07 2017 01:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2017 01:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I wanted to do something like this too some time ago but was to lazy to go through with it.
My point system was basically that I divided the tournaments in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3:
tier 1 is Blizzcon, IEM Katowice and GSL/SSL as well as the WCS season finals in 2013.
tier 2 are foreign cups with significant korean participation (most IEMs and DHs)
tier 3 are foreign cups with little korean participation (most HSCs and some other cups)
The one thing I wasn't sure about was how to rank the korean weekend tournaments like Kespa Cup. While on one hand it had the exact same level of players as GSL, Blizzcon etc on the other hand rating it the same would be weird because it certainly doesn't have the same prestige.
Well and the point distribution was basically that a tier 2 tournament gives twice as much points as a tier 3 tournament and a tier 1 tournament twice as much points as a tier 2 tournament.
Same for placements - reaching the finals would give twice as much points as reaching the semifinals, winning the finals twice as much as losing in the finals.
In practice this would mean that reaching two GSL finals gives as much points as winning one final, being 4 times in the semifinals as much as winning the finals, winning 2 IEMs with strong korean participation as much as winning a GSL etc
I think that's fair.
Only problem of course that it doesn't value Proleague results which are imo very important. Simply doublign the points according to tier and round in a tournament is obviously a simple system. I can definitely see using somethign like that, though it might be a bit too simple. In general i would assume the following things: Korea is the hardest, most competitive region and pretty much every single high lvl progamer tries to play in every single tournament. While you say tier two tournaments have "significant korean presentation", what does that exactly mean? At the end of the day most top players in korea didn't enter every tournament, there were some strong ones here and there for sure but the competitive field was still way, way weaker. I am not sure if it is fair to value it half as much based on that. But that's why i made this blog, to argue about things like that and see what arguments people have for one thing or another.
Well that's of course somewhat subjective but for certain tournaments it's very clear
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IEM_Season_IX_-_Taipei
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/IEM_Season_IX_-_San_Jose
those 2 tournaments have undoubtely stong korean participation. Playoffs are only koreans (except Snute at San Jose) with multiple GSL championship contenders.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2014_Red_Bull_Battle_Grounds:_Atlanta
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/HomeStory_Cup/7
those 2 tournaments on the other hand have only a small number of koreans and only 2-3 top koreans who decide the tournament between them. Obvious tier 3 tournaments.
Where to exactly draw the line; I'm not sure. Maybe defining some criteria could make it consistent.
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Everyone knows, but you refuse to admit it, the Greatest of All Time is ***** aka ****
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It is needed, I come from dota where everyone knows all the best games, I'd love to know the best games for SC2 as well.
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SC2's GOAT will always be Mvp
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One thing you could consider is to weight tournaments by their player pool and just ignore individual runs. That should be more manageable. And how many points each player is worth is calculated by iterating over the number of points assigned by your goat calculation repeatedly until you achieve an equilibrium (and each tournament would just be a reassignment of the points held by the pool of players among the players).
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It's certainly Life, but I will be interested to see your results.
probably Life, INnoVation, Mvp top 3
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I might consider to weigh tournaments based on the player pool, it certainly would be more precise. It also would be more work though, well maybe 
Still need some starting point with different point values right, so any input there is welcome.
Especially proleague and how to weigh in that is a challenge and i can certainly see different opinions on that one.
Example: The kespa ranking (in bw) basically required you to have 26 normal season wins to count as much as a starleague title. Is that reasonable for sc2?
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Stuchiu's list is so bad mostly because he has this unbreakable delusion that foreign tournaments can be made important by simply ferrying over a bunch of Koreans. So the first thing you need to do is realize how this mistake made the results absurd and actively avoid it.The whole idea of "judging the difficulty of oponents" is circular reasoning. Another terrible thing he did was taking into account perceived imbalances and the whole "meta" crap.
I don't really think there is much room to do anything else than assign point values to a placement in GSL/OSL/SSL and sum them up, everything else will end up absurd.
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I'd be more interested to see where Neeb fits in the top foreigner list than to see a new overall GOAT list.
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EPT
