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I was watching the Proleague All-star games, and the difference in skill made a pretty big impression on me.
In particular, compare the games  BoxeR vs  YellOw and Iris vs GGPlay. Both were TvZ, and the Terran won in both games. Yet I have no doubt that the newer players would have completely dominated the older ones.
I could keep up with the first game in the sense that their actions seemed slow and predictable. Both players open standard on Peaks. Units stand around for a few minutes. The mutalisk harass gets deflected. Hatchery is undefended and drones are decimated by marines. Lurkers are mispositioned and killed. Defilers are too late. GG. There were plenty of things both sides could have done better.
The second game was simply a repeat of the incredible OSL Finals. Both players open standard on Python. Mutalisks create a real threat. Expansions are immediately scouted and attacks are immediately prepared. A pair of hydralisks are immediately moved to the ramp, ready to be morphed into lurkers. The game plays out with surgical precision. Constant pressure from both sides, frantic battles all over the map. Attacks, feints, counters.
I had no doubt in my mind that Iris is a whole two levels above YellOw, and GGPlay similarly outclasses BoxeR. It would have been as one-sided as the coaches game had they switched opponents.
Like any other sport, StarCraft is constantly evolving. While other sports takes decades, StarCraft competition has come so far in a few short years.
Macro, micro, and strategy have matured. In the future, games will be decided on perfect multitasking, timing, execution, decision-making, reaction times.
What I'm trying to say is that players are getting better, faster, and pushing the limits of the game. There are getting closer to the point where their play is flawless. By observing a game, I will no longer able to be able to point out mistakes: bad scouting, forgetting to macro, losing units unnecessarily, missing opportunities to attack or expand. The top gamers of today are on top of things, that they're always one step ahead. When I'm thinking "the Terran should attack that expo", the Terran has already started moving out and the Zerg has already started to prepare defenses.
Every single battle is decisive and potentially game-ending. The game balances on the edge of a knife; the limit to the number of units one player can lose is literally the number that he can produce in the time it takes the other player to march his army across the map. Often times, one production cycle of units is enough to decide a game. At today's top skill level, any mistake that costs a player that many units can only be made up by equally large mistake from the other player.
In the past, one only needed to play well and then have a moment with perfect macro, execution, timing to pull of a win. Now, any time you play well instead of perfect results in a loss.
 
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
manner ebay is anything but standard mate.
edit: besides, progames still feature a fuckton of errors and mistakes in the vast majority of the games. It is still quite rare to see a game where both sides make virtually no mistakes.
Even Jaedong, who is by all accounts a surgical master in zvt, the guy responsible for the utter dismantling of Light and Hwasin in recent weeks, fucked up bigtime on python in wcg qualis (i think)
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I need to watch instead of going off memory to give better commentary. Overall, it had relatively little impact on the game flow, as opposed to say, proxy stuff.
The point is, perfection is expected, and to a large degree, required in order to win in today's competitive atmosphere. Mistakes are getting harder to point out, and like I said, progamers have limited, albeit somewhat decent room for error.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
this may sound harsh, but to a certain extent, only certain people can notice various degrees of errors. I'm not claiming to be one of the people who see the most in starcraft (b/c I'm obviously not), but for instance, certain fans will notice things like whether the initial workers are placed at the fastest mineral spots, while others will not.
Virtually every game still has micro and decisionmaking errors, as this game is still a game of incomplete information. Whether a spectator notices these errors is a different issue.
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Another example: The hwasin vs Jaedong game was terribly littered with errors from both sides, despite it being an absolute spectacle of a game. There were at least 5, and upwards of 10 critical errors made in the course of that single game.
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The margin of error has shrunk significantly over the course of progaming evolution. I get the impression that the only way to really recover from an error is if the the other side makes an equally large error. Jaedong and Hwasin would also tear apart Boxer and Yellow.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Yeah, I can agree that the margin of error has dramatically decreased, but at the same time, these errors of smaller mechanical deviations will result in a similar magnitude of setback due to the opponent's "perfection" and increased exploitation of the error.
I'm trying to formulate my crux here but I'm not sure how to vocalize it X__X
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
nice write
yeah sc has evolved a fuck load..
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Iraq1230 Posts
the iris vs ggplay game was bad, ggplay lost his 3rd gas very early and after that it was just a matter of time before ggplay ggs.
boxer vs yellow game was a nice demonstration of boxer micro, but yes yellow is too rusty these days.
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GGPlay would not dismantle rape massacre Boxer, at all -_-
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Iris outclassing Boxer???? blasphemy .,.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
these things are really not players getting better, just improved training and coaching, attention to details and a more planned approach to the game, constituting somewhat of a meta level change. te players' attention is focused on important aspects of the game, and are constantly reminded to complete the little things and not so little things. mechanical flawlessness i guess, but also a whole new level of struggle, as perfection and attention to some aspects of the game makes edges gained or lost in other areas more important.
really pretty much the same thing as any sport in which knowledge accumulates and plays a big role.
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WE ARE STRIVING FOR PERFECTION
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EPT
