On September 11 2017 16:10 TT1 wrote: ^ Now look at how dominant those Terran players were during their era. The top 3 Terran players (NaDa/oov/Flash) have 17 championships compared to 7 championships from the top 3 Protoss' (Bisu, Nal_rA, Jangbi). And obviously we're not talking about a small sample size here, BW's been around for a while..
On September 11 2017 16:06 iFU.pauline wrote:
On September 11 2017 15:52 Letmelose wrote: I will talk only about achievements, the only metric that can be vaguely compared between players from different eras. I will discuss the results of legendary players in individual leagues that had continuous presence across all eras (OGN StarLeague/KPGA Tournament/MSL). KPGA Tournaments started in 2002, so people like BoxeR will be shafted slightly, and MSL got cancelled earlier than the OGN StarLeague, so people who were doing well towards the end of professional Brood War such as FanTaSy will be shafted slightly also.
If there is a tie, I will take into account their other placements to break the tie.
5 terran players, 3 zerg players, and 2 protoss players.
As you can see, terran players are always dominating the all-time lists no matter which way you cut it. It's always in the same order, terran on top, and protoss at the bottom.
However, the number one player in terms of achievements is not clear cut for the protoss race as it is for the other two races:
NaDa is literally the top placed terran player for every single bracket stage.
Jaedong is the top placed zerg player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of round of sixteen appearances.
Stork is the top placed protoss player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of championships won.
Bisu is probably the top placed protoss player overall, but fails to even make the top ten list on most of the lists due to his inconsistency.
Protoss is the least successful race in the major individual leagues by almost any metric, but to make matters worse, there are no towering figureheads for the protoss race in terms of individual league achievements. Bisu simply does not dominate the other protoss legends such as Stork, Nal_rA and Reach apart from being more clutch in the finals. Remember, all it takes is a goon upgrade from Stork in game five, and we may have Stork as the most accomplished protoss player of all time in the major individual leagues.
Those are the kind of stats we need and of course NaDa comes on top.
Well i linked the liquipedia page as my source, it has all those numbers . Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
Isn't absolute skill level an absolutely terrible metric of judgement when comparing players from different eras? It wouldn't even take Bisu, By.Sun (who was said to be the top ranked protoss of his team towards the end of professional Brood War) would wipe the floor with almost every great player in history due to how advanced the meta-game evolved over the years, despite having never reached the round of sixteen in his professional career.
By that logic, Jesse Owens, one of the most accomplished track and field in history, as well as being the record holder for the 100 metre sprint for a longer duration than any other man in history, is rendered near useless judging by one of the two metrics you've mentioned, because his actual 100 metre record is actual pretty abysmal by today's standards.
Once you factor in the level of play to any significant degree, you are basically asking people to ignore players from the past. What's the point of counting Bisu's MSL trophies in 2007, when any rendition of him in the more recent past would wipe the floor with him? Bisu's best record in 2011 was the round of sixteen and the last finals he had seen was in 2008, but from an absolute skill point, he was head-and-shoulders above Bisu in 2007, despite the latter reaching three MSL finals in a row.
But if you look at the entirety of Bisu's body of work (total winrate, performance in non major tournaments like IEF etc.) you can easily make a case for him being an atypical bonjwa, more so than any other player. Overall he's had extremely good results, they just haven't been in major tournaments (OSL/MSL) like JD and Flash.
For example, did you count WCG wins in your championship ranking? Yes the final tournament isn't as hard as a regular major tournament but the Korean qualifiers are insanely hard, comparable to any major tourney.
There is only one thing I consider close to imbalanced in terran (assuming high-end pro level play) and that is the comsat station. Information limited only by time, but not resources and distance, is a terrific tool in the hands of a great progamer. I have not watched as many games as most of you have, but I have seen time and again Flash winning not because he had it easier mechanically or strategically, but because he knew what was going to happen at crucial points in the game.
And protoss is very much like guitar. Easiest to play badly.
On September 11 2017 16:35 Carnivorous Sheep wrote: JESUS TRY THE HARD LIFE OF A ZERG. WE DONT HAVE FUCKING MAP CROSSING ARCLITE CANNONS, EVERYTHING CANNOT BE REPAIRS, WE DONT HAVE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION LIKE SPIDER MINES AND WE CERTAINLY AS FUCK DONT HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAUSE ANY GAME THAT HAS THAT SUCKS LIKE COMMAND AND CONQUER 3. ALSO, WE DONT HAVE FLYING BUILDINGS OR MOTHERFUCKING DEFENSIVE STRUCTURES THAT SHOOT AIR AND GROUND AND CAN BE REPAIRED AND COST 100$ FUCKING MINERALS. OUR WORKERS DIE WHEN THE WIND BLOWS TOO HARD AND SURE AS FUCK DONT HAVE FUSION CUTTERS. WAIT? YOU HAVE GOLIATHS THAT SHOOT ACROSS THE MAP AT AIR UNITS AND CAN BE REPAIRED AND ARE CHEAP? JESUS WHO MADE THIS GAME.
JESUS I WISH I HAD 5-6 of THE ALL TIME BEST PLAYERS TO MODEL MY GAME AFTER. WAIT? WERENT THEY ALL FUCKING TERRAN? WE HAVE NADA, BOXER, OOV, FLASH, MIDAS and XELLOS ALL KICKING ASS FOR YEARS AT A TIME WHILE WE GET FUCKING FAT ASS JULY WHO SUCKS NOW, YELLOW WHO ALWAYS FUCKING SUCKED BUT NOBODY KNEW FOR A BIT AND WE FINALLY GOT SAVIOR BUT THEN THEY DRESSED HIM LIKE HITLER SO HE SUCKED AND NOW WE HAVE JAEDONG BUT THAT KID CANT FIGURE OUT THE NEW KOREAN MAPS THAT DONT MATTER. JESUS FUCK IT MUST BE NICE TO HAVE PLAYERS THAT SPAN DECADES AND DOMINATE THE ENTIRE TIME. GIMME SOME OF THAT PLEASE.
HEY WHAT ABOUT BUILDINGS DO YOU LOSE A SCV EACH TIME YOU MAKE ONE? NO. WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN ACTUALLY TELL THEM TO RETURN TO MINING AFTER THEY ARE DONE BUILDING? I THOUGHT THAT AUTO MINING GARBAGE WAS FOR HACKERS OR BAD GAMES. TERRAN'S CAN DO IT? FUCK THAT SOUNDS LIKE A SWEET DEAL. EACH TIME WE (zerg) HAVE TO BUILD WE TELL ONE OF OUR SACRED MINERS "HEY FUCK YOU TIME TO DIE" AND THEY DO. THEN WE GET A FUCKING BUILDING. WHICH, HALF THE TIME ISNT ENOUGH: WE HAVE TO PAY MOREE FUCKING MONEY TO GET IT TO DO SOME SHIT LIKE DICK THE GROUND OR SPRAY PISS IN THE AIR.
WHEN YOU SELECT RANDOM, WHAT GAME SCREEN DO YOU GET IN BETWEEN? ANY GUESSERS? THAT'S RIGHT: TERRAN. EVEN THE FUCKING GAME KNOWS WHAT YOU SHOULD OBVIOUSLY HAVE CHOSEN WHEN YOU FORGOT TO SELECT TERRAN AND GOT RANDOM. FUCKING INSANE BIAS.
On September 11 2017 16:10 TT1 wrote: ^ Now look at how dominant those Terran players were during their era. The top 3 Terran players (NaDa/oov/Flash) have 17 championships compared to 7 championships from the top 3 Protoss' (Bisu, Nal_rA, Jangbi). And obviously we're not talking about a small sample size here, BW's been around for a while..
On September 11 2017 16:06 iFU.pauline wrote:
On September 11 2017 15:52 Letmelose wrote: I will talk only about achievements, the only metric that can be vaguely compared between players from different eras. I will discuss the results of legendary players in individual leagues that had continuous presence across all eras (OGN StarLeague/KPGA Tournament/MSL). KPGA Tournaments started in 2002, so people like BoxeR will be shafted slightly, and MSL got cancelled earlier than the OGN StarLeague, so people who were doing well towards the end of professional Brood War such as FanTaSy will be shafted slightly also.
If there is a tie, I will take into account their other placements to break the tie.
5 terran players, 3 zerg players, and 2 protoss players.
As you can see, terran players are always dominating the all-time lists no matter which way you cut it. It's always in the same order, terran on top, and protoss at the bottom.
However, the number one player in terms of achievements is not clear cut for the protoss race as it is for the other two races:
NaDa is literally the top placed terran player for every single bracket stage.
Jaedong is the top placed zerg player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of round of sixteen appearances.
Stork is the top placed protoss player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of championships won.
Bisu is probably the top placed protoss player overall, but fails to even make the top ten list on most of the lists due to his inconsistency.
Protoss is the least successful race in the major individual leagues by almost any metric, but to make matters worse, there are no towering figureheads for the protoss race in terms of individual league achievements. Bisu simply does not dominate the other protoss legends such as Stork, Nal_rA and Reach apart from being more clutch in the finals. Remember, all it takes is a goon upgrade from Stork in game five, and we may have Stork as the most accomplished protoss player of all time in the major individual leagues.
Those are the kind of stats we need and of course NaDa comes on top.
Well i linked the liquipedia page as my source, it has all those numbers . Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
Isn't absolute skill level an absolutely terrible metric of judgement when comparing players from different eras? It wouldn't even take Bisu, By.Sun (who was said to be the top ranked protoss of his team towards the end of professional Brood War) would wipe the floor with almost every great player in history due to how advanced the meta-game evolved over the years, despite having never reached the round of sixteen in his professional career.
By that logic, Jesse Owens, one of the most accomplished track and field in history, as well as being the record holder for the 100 metre sprint for a longer duration than any other man in history, is rendered near useless judging by one of the two metrics you've mentioned, because his actual 100 metre record is actual pretty abysmal by today's standards.
Once you factor in the level of play to any significant degree, you are basically asking people to ignore players from the past. What's the point of counting Bisu's MSL trophies in 2007, when any rendition of him in the more recent past would wipe the floor with him? Bisu's best record in 2011 was the round of sixteen and the last finals he had seen was in 2008, but from an absolute skill point, he was head-and-shoulders above Bisu in 2007, despite the latter reaching three MSL finals in a row.
But if you look at the entirety of Bisu's body of work (total winrate, performance in non major tournaments) you can easily make a case for him being an atypical bonjwa. Overall he's had extremely good results, they just haven't been in major tournaments like JD and Flash.
For example, did you count WCG wins in your championship ranking? Yes the final tournament isn't as hard as a regular major tournament but the Korean qualifiers are insanely hard, comparable to any major tourney.
Almost everybody on the list has significant non-major tournament wins during their professional years. And, no I'm not going to count joke tournaments tournaments where three professional attended to beat a bunch of random amateurs. I'm only counting tournaments that had participation from at least twenty professional players:
NaDa (4): 3rd iTV Ranking League, 4th iTV Ranking League, GhemTV StarLeague S3, KT-KTF 2003/2004 Premier League ---------------------------------------------------------- Jaedong (3): GomTV Classic S1, WCG 2009, Seoul 2007 e-Sports Festival BoxeR (3): ZZGame.com Progamer Invitational, WCG 2001, WCG 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------- Flash (2): GomTV Classic S3, WCG 2010 July (2): KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League, 7th iTV Ranking League ---------------------------------------------------------- iloveoov (1): WCG 2006 Stork (1): WCG 2007 Bisu (1): GomTV Classic S2 XellOs (1): WCG 2004
Bisu did win of smaller tournaments that a select few professionals were invited to, but that's not a sign of excellence, that's a sign of being popular enough, or not having overlapping scheduling. If you're going to count every tournament with a single digit professional player participation, YellOw has won over a dozen of those.
Bisu does have excellent win rate, and so does EffOrt. In fact, EffOrt beats the crap out of multiple championship winning zergs such as sAviOr, or July. ZerO holds the record for having the highest win rate in games played in OGN StarLeague, yet nobody thinks he is the greatest OGN StarLeague player ever.
Bisu simply has portions of his career where he can hang with some of the best the scene has ever seen, but he also has huge inconsistencies to his career, which is why Stork was much better at qualifying for the lower rounds of the individual leagues, for example. Both Flash and Jaedong stands above their contemporaries by almost all metrics of performance, whereas the it simply does not hold true for Bisu. He was an inconsistent genius, who may have looked, or felt like he was on par with Flash and Jaedong, but his results as a competitor did not overshadow his contempories, which could be said for both Flash and Jaedong by almost all metrics.
If you were curious about WCG qualifications, Stork and Jaedong were the most successful players of the modern era, qualifying for the main stage a record three times each. They are the only players in the post-XellOs era to have qualified for the main WCG tournament more than once. Bisu managed to represent his country once, and got a bronze medal on the main stage. Not bad, but nothing spectacular either. Even Kal managed a silver medal in WCG 2010.
Jaedong is a bonjwa by every possible metric anyway, its just that Flash played like a god in 2010 and outshined everyone. As for Tesagi, i think PvZ is the matchup with some real problems.
On September 11 2017 17:01 TaardadAiel wrote: There is only one thing I consider close to imbalanced in terran (assuming high-end pro level play) and that is the comsat station. Information limited only by time, but not resources and distance, is a terrific tool in the hands of a great progamer. I have not watched as many games as most of you have, but I have seen time and again Flash winning not because he had it easier mechanically or strategically, but because he knew what was going to happen at crucial points in the game.
And protoss is very much like guitar. Easiest to play badly.
Being completely honest, if Terran didn't have Scan TvP would be impossible to win. Not only because of arbiters, but if you can't see the tech you will immediately lose.
On September 11 2017 17:01 TaardadAiel wrote: There is only one thing I consider close to imbalanced in terran (assuming high-end pro level play) and that is the comsat station. Information limited only by time, but not resources and distance, is a terrific tool in the hands of a great progamer. I have not watched as many games as most of you have, but I have seen time and again Flash winning not because he had it easier mechanically or strategically, but because he knew what was going to happen at crucial points in the game.
And protoss is very much like guitar. Easiest to play badly.
Naw, naw, naw, don't get it twisted with that perverse anti-Terran rhetoric. This is how it really is: areas exposed by scan disappear all too quickly. After that, the slimy, deceitful Zerg and Protoss fuckers just alter their "revealed" game plan and you don't know what they're actually doing until you can scan again or if you have lots of scans because it's late game, you have to waste APM (which is a pretty big fucking resource) scanning and checking continuously. Meanwhile, slimy Zerg and Toss cheaters have retardedly cheap permanent map hack units in the form of overlords and observers that--get this- can move around freely showing them everything. To add insult to injury, these overpowered flying fucks get speed and sight upgrades. Last time I checked you couldn't upgrade comsat range or speed!
Edit: And as a result of having to waste your limited add-on ability by making lame-ass comsats to compensate for the lack of intel, you are no longer able to make nukes to try to overcome the massive imba, as if it weren't hard to enough to pull off nukes already.
Just look at this classic example of Protoss imba: Hiya nukes free twice killing all the OP probes and a bunch of OP dragoons and finally the OP nexus...and free still wins the game due to Protoss OP.
On September 11 2017 15:30 reincremate wrote: I think it's because Protoss is the easy race, so most really skilled players will pick Terran and Zerg to challenge themselves.
Boxer could have won like 12 OSLs if he played Protoss, but he was like "yo this is too reasy, I'm going to play the massively hard race instead to give everyone else a chance" and then all these other high-skill players started doing the same with Terran and Zerg.
You are forgetting zerg. If Boxer playded protoss he would have been stopped by zergs, plenty more than the times he got stopped by protoss players as terran. If you look back at the participation lists for OSLs, you can clearly see that protoss was the race that was struggling the most.
I think your theory of terran and zerg being more of an challenge and hence a certain type of ambitious and inner motivated player would choose them is an interesting theory. I think one should be careful of reading too much into it however because i think there are plenty of other reason to choose a certain race and if we look at TT1's reasonable list of top10 players of all time, we are talking about a very small sample of players, right? Then two plausible explanations for why there are 5 terrans (and not 3,333333) is simple chance or the theory that at the very highest level of near perfect skill, the rewards are greater as terran.
Qikz, I agree; it's just that in my opinion comsat power raises exponentially with player skill. A vulture, for example, is tremendously cost-effective, but as someone mentioned earlier, there is a definite cap at using them - they are awfully apm-intensive. Comsat interpretation has no boundary and as for mechanics, well, you can easily hotkey those. Provided progamers at this level are not just mindless clickers, I bet they're willing to sacrifice single-digit apm for information.
reincremate, buddy, I play Terran. It's just that I consider the comsat to be one of the main reasons there are several Terran bonjwas. Players with such ridiculous skill can make wonders out of almost FREE information. Overlords and observers can actually die WHILE WATCHING, one of them is a flying supply depot(therefore important, and it's made out of the same old larvae that give you units and stuff) and is comically slow initially, the other costs some gas and supply, is pretty brittle, and requires a dedicated tech tree. And is one of TWO of the race's detectors.
Then again, you are probably being ironic and I am a dumb moron, who couldn't get the joke.
And I consider the game as close to balanced as I would want it, being a total noob and only a fan of the scene. I still think maps are the primary determinants of balance.
On September 11 2017 16:10 TT1 wrote: ^ Now look at how dominant those Terran players were during their era. The top 3 Terran players (NaDa/oov/Flash) have 17 championships compared to 7 championships from the top 3 Protoss' (Bisu, Nal_rA, Jangbi). And obviously we're not talking about a small sample size here, BW's been around for a while..
On September 11 2017 16:06 iFU.pauline wrote:
On September 11 2017 15:52 Letmelose wrote: I will talk only about achievements, the only metric that can be vaguely compared between players from different eras. I will discuss the results of legendary players in individual leagues that had continuous presence across all eras (OGN StarLeague/KPGA Tournament/MSL). KPGA Tournaments started in 2002, so people like BoxeR will be shafted slightly, and MSL got cancelled earlier than the OGN StarLeague, so people who were doing well towards the end of professional Brood War such as FanTaSy will be shafted slightly also.
If there is a tie, I will take into account their other placements to break the tie.
5 terran players, 3 zerg players, and 2 protoss players.
As you can see, terran players are always dominating the all-time lists no matter which way you cut it. It's always in the same order, terran on top, and protoss at the bottom.
However, the number one player in terms of achievements is not clear cut for the protoss race as it is for the other two races:
NaDa is literally the top placed terran player for every single bracket stage.
Jaedong is the top placed zerg player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of round of sixteen appearances.
Stork is the top placed protoss player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of championships won.
Bisu is probably the top placed protoss player overall, but fails to even make the top ten list on most of the lists due to his inconsistency.
Protoss is the least successful race in the major individual leagues by almost any metric, but to make matters worse, there are no towering figureheads for the protoss race in terms of individual league achievements. Bisu simply does not dominate the other protoss legends such as Stork, Nal_rA and Reach apart from being more clutch in the finals. Remember, all it takes is a goon upgrade from Stork in game five, and we may have Stork as the most accomplished protoss player of all time in the major individual leagues.
Those are the kind of stats we need and of course NaDa comes on top.
Well i linked the liquipedia page as my source, it has all those numbers . Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
Isn't absolute skill level an absolutely terrible metric of judgement when comparing players from different eras? It wouldn't even take Bisu, By.Sun (who was said to be the top ranked protoss of his team towards the end of professional Brood War) would wipe the floor with almost every great player in history due to how advanced the meta-game evolved over the years, despite having never reached the round of sixteen in his professional career.
By that logic, Jesse Owens, one of the most accomplished track and field in history, as well as being the record holder for the 100 metre sprint for a longer duration than any other man in history, is rendered near useless judging by one of the two metrics you've mentioned, because his actual 100 metre record is actual pretty abysmal by today's standards.
Once you factor in the level of play to any significant degree, you are basically asking people to ignore players from the past. What's the point of counting Bisu's MSL trophies in 2007, when any rendition of him in the more recent past would wipe the floor with him? Bisu's best record in 2011 was the round of sixteen and the last finals he had seen was in 2008, but from an absolute skill point, he was head-and-shoulders above Bisu in 2007, despite the latter reaching three MSL finals in a row.
But if you look at the entirety of Bisu's body of work (total winrate, performance in non major tournaments) you can easily make a case for him being an atypical bonjwa. Overall he's had extremely good results, they just haven't been in major tournaments like JD and Flash.
For example, did you count WCG wins in your championship ranking? Yes the final tournament isn't as hard as a regular major tournament but the Korean qualifiers are insanely hard, comparable to any major tourney.
Almost everybody on the list has significant non-major tournament wins during their professional years. And, no I'm not going to count joke tournaments tournaments where three professional attended to beat a bunch of random amateurs. I'm only counting tournaments that had participation from at least twenty professional players:
NaDa (4): 3rd iTV Ranking League, 4th iTV Ranking League, GhemTV StarLeague S3, KT-KTF 2003/2004 Premier League ---------------------------------------------------------- Jaedong (3): GomTV Classic S1, WCG 2009, Seoul 2007 e-Sports Festival BoxeR (3): ZZGame.com Progamer Invitational, WCG 2001, WCG 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------- Flash (2): GomTV Classic S3, WCG 2010 July (2): KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League, 7th iTV Ranking League ---------------------------------------------------------- iloveoov (1): WCG 2006 Stork (1): WCG 2007 Bisu (1): GomTV Classic S2 XellOs (1): WCG 2004
Bisu did win of smaller tournaments that a select few professionals were invited to, but that's not a sign of excellence, that's a sign of being popular enough, or not having overlapping scheduling. If you're going to count every tournament with a single digit professional player participation, YellOw has won over a dozen of those.
Bisu does have excellent win rate, and so does EffOrt. In fact, EffOrt beats the crap out of multiple championship winning zergs such as sAviOr, or July. ZerO holds the record for having the highest win rate in games played in OGN StarLeague, yet nobody thinks he is the greatest OGN StarLeague player ever.
Bisu simply has portions of his career where he can hang with some of the best the scene has ever seen, but he also has huge inconsistencies to his career, which is why Stork was much better at qualifying for the lower rounds of the individual leagues, for example. Both Flash and Jaedong stands above their contemporaries by almost all metrics of performance, whereas the it simply does not hold true for Bisu. He was an inconsistent genius, who may have looked, or felt like he was on par with Flash and Jaedong, but his results as a competitor did not overshadow his contempories, which could be said for both Flash and Jaedong by almost all metrics.
If you were curious about WCG qualifications, Stork and Jaedong were the most successful players of the modern era, qualifying for the main stage a record three times each. They are the only players in the post-XellOs era to have qualified for the main WCG tournament more than once. Bisu managed to represent his country once, and got a bronze medal on the main stage. Not bad, but nothing spectacular either. Even Kal managed a silver medal in WCG 2010.
Most of those tournaments had huge qualifiers that players had go through (not counting the Blizz Worldwide Invitationals). Bisu has 4 IEF titles, each of those had qualifiers and he also has a GOMTV Classic title. On top of that he also has 3 MSL titles. Championships matter, imo 3 major championships make you a bonjwa. All the players who have 3 or more major championships were extremely dominant at a certain point in their career.
In any case all this is moot, my main argument was to talk about the lack of protoss dominance (and the dominance of Terran) throughout the history of BW.. not whether or not Stork deserves to be ranked ahead of Bisu due to his consistency in major tournaments.
If you have like 10 great, dominating players thats a very small sample size. Doesn't matter if it took 20 years. Besides, they are not independent either. How many young ambitious players took terran because of boxer, the first super star of BW. Was the race distribution really 1/3? I don't see how you can make any conclusion on balance without taking those things into account.
On September 11 2017 16:10 TT1 wrote: ^ Now look at how dominant those Terran players were during their era. The top 3 Terran players (NaDa/oov/Flash) have 17 championships compared to 7 championships from the top 3 Protoss' (Bisu, Nal_rA, Jangbi). And obviously we're not talking about a small sample size here, BW's been around for a while..
On September 11 2017 16:06 iFU.pauline wrote:
On September 11 2017 15:52 Letmelose wrote: I will talk only about achievements, the only metric that can be vaguely compared between players from different eras. I will discuss the results of legendary players in individual leagues that had continuous presence across all eras (OGN StarLeague/KPGA Tournament/MSL). KPGA Tournaments started in 2002, so people like BoxeR will be shafted slightly, and MSL got cancelled earlier than the OGN StarLeague, so people who were doing well towards the end of professional Brood War such as FanTaSy will be shafted slightly also.
If there is a tie, I will take into account their other placements to break the tie.
5 terran players, 3 zerg players, and 2 protoss players.
As you can see, terran players are always dominating the all-time lists no matter which way you cut it. It's always in the same order, terran on top, and protoss at the bottom.
However, the number one player in terms of achievements is not clear cut for the protoss race as it is for the other two races:
NaDa is literally the top placed terran player for every single bracket stage.
Jaedong is the top placed zerg player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of round of sixteen appearances.
Stork is the top placed protoss player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of championships won.
Bisu is probably the top placed protoss player overall, but fails to even make the top ten list on most of the lists due to his inconsistency.
Protoss is the least successful race in the major individual leagues by almost any metric, but to make matters worse, there are no towering figureheads for the protoss race in terms of individual league achievements. Bisu simply does not dominate the other protoss legends such as Stork, Nal_rA and Reach apart from being more clutch in the finals. Remember, all it takes is a goon upgrade from Stork in game five, and we may have Stork as the most accomplished protoss player of all time in the major individual leagues.
Those are the kind of stats we need and of course NaDa comes on top.
Well i linked the liquipedia page as my source, it has all those numbers . Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
Isn't absolute skill level an absolutely terrible metric of judgement when comparing players from different eras? It wouldn't even take Bisu, By.Sun (who was said to be the top ranked protoss of his team towards the end of professional Brood War) would wipe the floor with almost every great player in history due to how advanced the meta-game evolved over the years, despite having never reached the round of sixteen in his professional career.
By that logic, Jesse Owens, one of the most accomplished track and field in history, as well as being the record holder for the 100 metre sprint for a longer duration than any other man in history, is rendered near useless judging by one of the two metrics you've mentioned, because his actual 100 metre record is actual pretty abysmal by today's standards.
Once you factor in the level of play to any significant degree, you are basically asking people to ignore players from the past. What's the point of counting Bisu's MSL trophies in 2007, when any rendition of him in the more recent past would wipe the floor with him? Bisu's best record in 2011 was the round of sixteen and the last finals he had seen was in 2008, but from an absolute skill point, he was head-and-shoulders above Bisu in 2007, despite the latter reaching three MSL finals in a row.
But if you look at the entirety of Bisu's body of work (total winrate, performance in non major tournaments) you can easily make a case for him being an atypical bonjwa. Overall he's had extremely good results, they just haven't been in major tournaments like JD and Flash.
For example, did you count WCG wins in your championship ranking? Yes the final tournament isn't as hard as a regular major tournament but the Korean qualifiers are insanely hard, comparable to any major tourney.
Almost everybody on the list has significant non-major tournament wins during their professional years. And, no I'm not going to count joke tournaments tournaments where three professional attended to beat a bunch of random amateurs. I'm only counting tournaments that had participation from at least twenty professional players:
NaDa (4): 3rd iTV Ranking League, 4th iTV Ranking League, GhemTV StarLeague S3, KT-KTF 2003/2004 Premier League ---------------------------------------------------------- Jaedong (3): GomTV Classic S1, WCG 2009, Seoul 2007 e-Sports Festival BoxeR (3): ZZGame.com Progamer Invitational, WCG 2001, WCG 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------- Flash (2): GomTV Classic S3, WCG 2010 July (2): KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League, 7th iTV Ranking League ---------------------------------------------------------- iloveoov (1): WCG 2006 Stork (1): WCG 2007 Bisu (1): GomTV Classic S2 XellOs (1): WCG 2004
Bisu did win of smaller tournaments that a select few professionals were invited to, but that's not a sign of excellence, that's a sign of being popular enough, or not having overlapping scheduling. If you're going to count every tournament with a single digit professional player participation, YellOw has won over a dozen of those.
Bisu does have excellent win rate, and so does EffOrt. In fact, EffOrt beats the crap out of multiple championship winning zergs such as sAviOr, or July. ZerO holds the record for having the highest win rate in games played in OGN StarLeague, yet nobody thinks he is the greatest OGN StarLeague player ever.
Bisu simply has portions of his career where he can hang with some of the best the scene has ever seen, but he also has huge inconsistencies to his career, which is why Stork was much better at qualifying for the lower rounds of the individual leagues, for example. Both Flash and Jaedong stands above their contemporaries by almost all metrics of performance, whereas the it simply does not hold true for Bisu. He was an inconsistent genius, who may have looked, or felt like he was on par with Flash and Jaedong, but his results as a competitor did not overshadow his contempories, which could be said for both Flash and Jaedong by almost all metrics.
If you were curious about WCG qualifications, Stork and Jaedong were the most successful players of the modern era, qualifying for the main stage a record three times each. They are the only players in the post-XellOs era to have qualified for the main WCG tournament more than once. Bisu managed to represent his country once, and got a bronze medal on the main stage. Not bad, but nothing spectacular either. Even Kal managed a silver medal in WCG 2010.
Most of those tournaments had huge qualifiers that players had go through (not counting the Blizz Worldwide Invitationals). Bisu has 4 IEF titles, each of those had qualifiers and he also has a GOMTV Classic title. On top of that he also has 3 MSL titles. Championships matter, imo 3 major championships make you a bonjwa. All the players who have 3 or more major championships were extremely dominant at a certain point in their career.
In any case all this is moot, my main argument was to talk about the lack of protoss dominance (and the dominance of Terran) throughout the history of BW.. not whether or not Stork deserves to be ranked ahead of Bisu due to his consistency in major tournaments.
IEF had huge qualifier tournaments for amateur/semi-professional players, and unless you were curious about who were the best practice partners at the time, I don't think it's an apt comparison to tournaments like iTV Ranking League, or KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League that actually had a qualifying stage for professional players.
If you believe winning three major individual league championships is the be-all-and-end-all of what constitutes a bonjwa, then I can't convince you otherwise, but that's not the main issue like you said.
I would certainly agree that historically speaking, terran was the most successful race, while the protoss race was the least successful. My point was that contrasting the number one players from each of the three races becomes a flawed exercise due to the fact that Flash is not the clear number one in terms of achievements, and Bisu barely qualifies as the clear number one player of his race due to his highly inconsistent nature. You are pretending that the players you perceive to be the greatest players ever were all extreme outliers in terms of achievements, when that was simply not the case. It's an insult to NaDa to say that you can rate Bisu above him, when it's clear that they are not even on the same planet in terms of achievements.
If absolute skill is of paramount importance, then you should probably restructure the list to include the likes of Last, since he'll wreck anybody who made their mark in the distant past.
Looking at the best players of all time, a small list of individual outliers, and trying to draw balance conclusions from that is fallacious. Making threads on balance always yields the same results; the same people who cry about x will cry about x, and there will be moronic shitposts, some heated words and misleading numbers will get thrown around, and then it fizzles out until next time it's brought up.
Let's get meta here. Instead of questioning balance, let's question whether balance is even worth discussing. I think not, because what purpose does this discussion have? Whatever "conclusions" we arrive at as a result of this discussion, would we even know how to implement changes to the game to make it more "balanced?"
Let's not forget that this is always dependent on the context of maps. There have been maps that gave every race a huge advantage over some other. How does that factor into the "balance" discussion if all it takes is an extra entrance into your natural to make PvZ unplayable, for example? How can one ever examine balance in isolation, like judging a painting without a canvas?
I've gone to university professors with tons of numbers compiled by myself and Lightwip/LegalLord and there was little consensus as to what the best statistical analysis would be on the historic W/L data from BW's professional era. Data that we have already determined to be misleading in nature anyway, and demanding of a subjective knife to dice up into "meaningful" parts. In other words, this is just another futile exercise, with hot air being blown all over the place but no outcome. Looking forward to the next iteration in a month or two, it's always fun.
On September 11 2017 16:10 TT1 wrote: ^ Now look at how dominant those Terran players were during their era. The top 3 Terran players (NaDa/oov/Flash) have 17 championships compared to 7 championships from the top 3 Protoss' (Bisu, Nal_rA, Jangbi). And obviously we're not talking about a small sample size here, BW's been around for a while..
On September 11 2017 16:06 iFU.pauline wrote:
On September 11 2017 15:52 Letmelose wrote: I will talk only about achievements, the only metric that can be vaguely compared between players from different eras. I will discuss the results of legendary players in individual leagues that had continuous presence across all eras (OGN StarLeague/KPGA Tournament/MSL). KPGA Tournaments started in 2002, so people like BoxeR will be shafted slightly, and MSL got cancelled earlier than the OGN StarLeague, so people who were doing well towards the end of professional Brood War such as FanTaSy will be shafted slightly also.
If there is a tie, I will take into account their other placements to break the tie.
5 terran players, 3 zerg players, and 2 protoss players.
As you can see, terran players are always dominating the all-time lists no matter which way you cut it. It's always in the same order, terran on top, and protoss at the bottom.
However, the number one player in terms of achievements is not clear cut for the protoss race as it is for the other two races:
NaDa is literally the top placed terran player for every single bracket stage.
Jaedong is the top placed zerg player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of round of sixteen appearances.
Stork is the top placed protoss player for every single bracket stage apart from the number of championships won.
Bisu is probably the top placed protoss player overall, but fails to even make the top ten list on most of the lists due to his inconsistency.
Protoss is the least successful race in the major individual leagues by almost any metric, but to make matters worse, there are no towering figureheads for the protoss race in terms of individual league achievements. Bisu simply does not dominate the other protoss legends such as Stork, Nal_rA and Reach apart from being more clutch in the finals. Remember, all it takes is a goon upgrade from Stork in game five, and we may have Stork as the most accomplished protoss player of all time in the major individual leagues.
Those are the kind of stats we need and of course NaDa comes on top.
Well i linked the liquipedia page as my source, it has all those numbers . Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
Isn't absolute skill level an absolutely terrible metric of judgement when comparing players from different eras? It wouldn't even take Bisu, By.Sun (who was said to be the top ranked protoss of his team towards the end of professional Brood War) would wipe the floor with almost every great player in history due to how advanced the meta-game evolved over the years, despite having never reached the round of sixteen in his professional career.
By that logic, Jesse Owens, one of the most accomplished track and field in history, as well as being the record holder for the 100 metre sprint for a longer duration than any other man in history, is rendered near useless judging by one of the two metrics you've mentioned, because his actual 100 metre record is actual pretty abysmal by today's standards.
Once you factor in the level of play to any significant degree, you are basically asking people to ignore players from the past. What's the point of counting Bisu's MSL trophies in 2007, when any rendition of him in the more recent past would wipe the floor with him? Bisu's best record in 2011 was the round of sixteen and the last finals he had seen was in 2008, but from an absolute skill point, he was head-and-shoulders above Bisu in 2007, despite the latter reaching three MSL finals in a row.
But if you look at the entirety of Bisu's body of work (total winrate, performance in non major tournaments) you can easily make a case for him being an atypical bonjwa. Overall he's had extremely good results, they just haven't been in major tournaments like JD and Flash.
For example, did you count WCG wins in your championship ranking? Yes the final tournament isn't as hard as a regular major tournament but the Korean qualifiers are insanely hard, comparable to any major tourney.
Almost everybody on the list has significant non-major tournament wins during their professional years. And, no I'm not going to count joke tournaments tournaments where three professional attended to beat a bunch of random amateurs. I'm only counting tournaments that had participation from at least twenty professional players:
NaDa (4): 3rd iTV Ranking League, 4th iTV Ranking League, GhemTV StarLeague S3, KT-KTF 2003/2004 Premier League ---------------------------------------------------------- Jaedong (3): GomTV Classic S1, WCG 2009, Seoul 2007 e-Sports Festival BoxeR (3): ZZGame.com Progamer Invitational, WCG 2001, WCG 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------- Flash (2): GomTV Classic S3, WCG 2010 July (2): KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League, 7th iTV Ranking League ---------------------------------------------------------- iloveoov (1): WCG 2006 Stork (1): WCG 2007 Bisu (1): GomTV Classic S2 XellOs (1): WCG 2004
Bisu did win of smaller tournaments that a select few professionals were invited to, but that's not a sign of excellence, that's a sign of being popular enough, or not having overlapping scheduling. If you're going to count every tournament with a single digit professional player participation, YellOw has won over a dozen of those.
Bisu does have excellent win rate, and so does EffOrt. In fact, EffOrt beats the crap out of multiple championship winning zergs such as sAviOr, or July. ZerO holds the record for having the highest win rate in games played in OGN StarLeague, yet nobody thinks he is the greatest OGN StarLeague player ever.
Bisu simply has portions of his career where he can hang with some of the best the scene has ever seen, but he also has huge inconsistencies to his career, which is why Stork was much better at qualifying for the lower rounds of the individual leagues, for example. Both Flash and Jaedong stands above their contemporaries by almost all metrics of performance, whereas the it simply does not hold true for Bisu. He was an inconsistent genius, who may have looked, or felt like he was on par with Flash and Jaedong, but his results as a competitor did not overshadow his contempories, which could be said for both Flash and Jaedong by almost all metrics.
If you were curious about WCG qualifications, Stork and Jaedong were the most successful players of the modern era, qualifying for the main stage a record three times each. They are the only players in the post-XellOs era to have qualified for the main WCG tournament more than once. Bisu managed to represent his country once, and got a bronze medal on the main stage. Not bad, but nothing spectacular either. Even Kal managed a silver medal in WCG 2010.
Most of those tournaments had huge qualifiers that players had go through (not counting the Blizz Worldwide Invitationals). Bisu has 4 IEF titles, each of those had qualifiers and he also has a GOMTV Classic title. On top of that he also has 3 MSL titles. Championships matter, imo 3 major championships make you a bonjwa. All the players who have 3 or more major championships were extremely dominant at a certain point in their career.
In any case all this is moot, my main argument was to talk about the lack of protoss dominance (and the dominance of Terran) throughout the history of BW.. not whether or not Stork deserves to be ranked ahead of Bisu due to his consistency in major tournaments.
IEF had huge qualifier tournaments for amateur/semi-professional players, and unless you were curious about who were the best practice partners at the time, I don't think it's an apt comparison to tournaments like iTV Ranking League, or KT-KTF 2004/2005 Premier League that actually had a qualifying stage for professional players.
If you believe winning three major individual league championships is the be-all-and-end-all of what constitutes a bonjwa, then I can't convince you otherwise, but that's not the main issue like you said.
I would certainly agree that historically speaking, terran was the most successful race, while the protoss race was the least successful. My point was that contrasting the number one players from each of the three races becomes a flawed exercise due to the fact that Flash is not the clear number one in terms of achievements, and Bisu barely qualifies as the clear number one player of his race due to his highly inconsistent nature. You are pretending that the players you perceive to be the greatest players ever were all extreme outliers in terms of achievements, when that was simply not the case. It's an insult to NaDa to say that you can rate Bisu above him, when it's clear that they are not even on the same planet in terms of achievements.
If absolute skill is of paramount importance, then you should probably restructure the list to include the likes of Last, since he'll wreck anybody who made their mark in the distant past.
But i never said that and i don't have Bisu ahead of NaDa, i have JD ahead of NaDa. I only said some people MIGHT have Bisu ahead of NaDa just so we'd avoid having needless discussions over whether or not Bisu should be ahead of NaDa and vice versa (mainly just to be PC, Bisu has a lot of fans and i didn't want the thread to get easily derailed).
Letmelose: While I agree that the absolute skill is increasing over time, is the gap really that significant? I'll concede that anything before 2005 or so would be comically outdated today, but couldn't you make a case for 2010 Flash holding his own against 2017 Flash after a quick, theoretical crash course in how the metagame has evolved?
(Which I counter-intuitively believe would be fair, since otherwise 2017 Flash would have unfair information advantage simply by knowing how 2010 Flash played. In my scenario, 2010 Flash wouldn't be allowed to practice the new builds or anything, simply know about them.)
2010 Flash was a thorough-bred full time progamer with an entire team providing perfect training environment, and an unrelenting play schedule against the very best. That has got to count for something, at least?
On September 11 2017 18:25 Jealous wrote: Looking at the best players of all time, a small list of individual outliers, and trying to draw balance conclusions from that is fallacious. Making threads on balance always yields the same results; the same people who cry about x will cry about x, and there will be moronic shitposts, some heated words and misleading numbers will get thrown around, and then it fizzles out until next time it's brought up.
I think you are irrationally hating on very well-thought out discussion that promotes practical solutions to the balance problems inherent in the game. That's narrow-minded and backwards, man.
Let's get meta here. Instead of questioning balance, let's question whether balance is even worth discussing. I think not, because what purpose does this discussion have? Whatever "conclusions" we arrive at as a result of this discussion, would we even know how to implement changes to the game to make it more "balanced?"
Of course balance is worth discussing. Why else would anyone discuss it? What conclusions can we make, you ask? My answer is: very many of course! I won't try to list all of them (as I personally don't know all of them) but can share with you one important conclusion: despite super OP Protoss and Zerg imba in the form of defilers, arbiters, hydralisks, zealots, workers with greater range, buildings that heal over time on their own/have shields, etc. there have been a greater number of Terran bonjwas. That's because Boxer was a freaking genius. Then a bunch of less amazing but still pretty good SC players decided to follow in his shining example. Like Boxer himself said: the humans of course have to win in the end no matter what, just like in Starship Troopers.
Let's not forget that this is always dependent on the context of maps. There have been maps that gave every race a huge advantage over some other. How does that factor into the "balance" discussion if all it takes is an extra entrance into your natural to make PvZ unplayable, for example? How can one ever examine balance in isolation, like judging a painting without a canvas?
Any quick look at BW history makes it self-evident that they had to counterbalance the genius of Boxer, Oov and Nada by making maps that were imba against Terran. Just look up any OSL that wasn't won by those three during their era as proof. But it didn't always work out though, as we ended up with a boxer vs oov finals anyway.
I've gone to university professors with tons of numbers compiled by myself and Lightwip/LegalLord and there was little consensus as to what the best statistical analysis would be on the historic W/L data from BW's professional era. Data that we have already determined to be misleading in nature anyway, and demanding of a subjective knife to dice up into "meaningful" parts. In other words, this is just another futile exercise, with hot air being blown all over the place but no outcome. Looking forward to the next iteration in a month or two, it's always fun.
That's a lot of words, but no substance. You need to provide some evidence to back up your ideas.
Let me be serious for a second. Do you all honestly want to risk a balance patch NOW?
The game has been fine for nearly 10 years. Every race have had winners. Why would you upset everything now to try and balance something that's mostly fine?
On September 11 2017 19:25 Qikz wrote: Let me be serious for a second. Do you all honestly want to risk a balance patch NOW?
The game has been fine for nearly 10 years. Every race have had winners. Why would you upset everything now to try and balance something that's mostly fine?
Has the game really been fine? There's plenty of data that suggests otherwise. BW's been around for a long time, of course there's gonna be protoss and zerg winners. You have to look at every race as a whole to judge things properly tho.
In any case the game can be balanced around maps.. but that alone is enough to tell you that there's an inherent issue (you have to balance maps around Terran). If i had to make a balance change i honestly wouldn't know what to do, mostly in fear of breaking the game.
Does anyone really believe this game is perfectly balanced? If yes, does anyone believe that each race will stay completely balanced regardless of how high the mechanical skill of the players becomes?
Obviously the answer(s) are NO.
Terran is slightly OP. (Even if it's 2-3%)
Do we wanna mess with the balance and heritage (sacredness) of a 20 years old game? I'm not sure.
P.S. Terran is hardest on low levels, so, being slightly OP on top level is like a pat on the back for sticking with the hardest race thru all those levels and getting cheesed the fuck out in various ways. If BW was re-balanced in a way that all races were balanced on TOP level - no new player would choose Terran imo, as suddenly it's even harder on lower levels. It's way to hard to perfect to come to the top level, only to be perfectly balanced with others.
EPT
. Like i said i mainly factored on player accomplishments but i also took individual player skill levels into consideration (in Bisu's case for example, i called him a bonjwa based on his skill level). You also have to factor in the level of play during each players prime.
