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I got a PM today from a relatively new member, ilovezil, that contained what I felt was an open-ended and excellent question. Below is the PM and my response. ilovezil, I hope you don't mind me posting this!
I'd love for the community to share their thoughts on this matter!
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From: ilovezil
Subject: "how good"
Hi. I just wanted to find out, from your insight, a little about how you determine a player's worth. It was always a problem for me when I tried to determine if player A is defintely better than player B, etc. There are just so many factors like had a bad day, luck, or even the level of the players; I cannot discern all of this in my brain. That statement, "I am better than you...", it's not so easily determined, even if player A goes 3-0 vs player B. I'd appreciate it if you can share some of your thoughts.
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To: ilovezil
Subject: Re: "how good"
Yeah, absolutely. I know precisely what you mean when you talk about the difficulties in gauging skill. It's never exact, and it's rarely easy.
I won't lie: statistics are helpful. The best statistics are by matchup, meaning that you can view how a player performs vT, vZ, and vP. This lets you not just get a feel for their overall record, but for what matchups they are strong/weak in. A summation of how strong a particular player is across all his matchups is what you’re ultimately looking for (“This player is strong vT, about average vP, and below average vZ.”), but it takes a lot more than statistics to achieve even a semi-accurate statement of this nature.
This difficulty comes from the fact that statistics never tell the whole story. It is important to watch *a lot* of games. You can "discount" (what I mean to say is "semi-ignore," and that "semi-" is a big, big qualification; don't ignore them completely!) a lot of games on the basis of cheese or map imbalance. If, for instance, the matchup/map is TvP on R-Point--and the positions are horizontal--you can *usually* overlook a P loss; it's just so, so difficult to win at those positions. If the P does manage to win, it's *probably* because the T made a mistake or the P cheesed. But if the P did an all-in build and crippled the Terran, and the Terran still managed to come back for the win, well, you can make a skill judgment from a game like that. So overlooking wins and losses is something you have to be careful about.
Beyond that, there is a lot of luck in StarCraft, especially in PvP and ZvZ. If you watch Bisu's games against Ra, it should be pretty obvious that Bisu, in games 1 and 2, happened to pick better builds than Ra, and he won very quickly because of these superior build choices. You can argue that those choices are a form of skill, but that's a pretty hollow argument when neither player was able to conclusively scout the other. The 3-0, then, doesn't mean that there's some massive skill gap between the two: Bisu just had a good day (although Bisu is probably the better player overall, Ra is arguably just as good at PvP).
So the best maps for gauging skill are ones that are balanced in a particular matchup, because no map is balanced across all matchups. A TvP/PvT win on RLT, Arcadia, and Longinus (for example) can be considered a "skilled" win (assuming no cheese), because the maps are essentially balanced in that matchup. But even then, all you're left with is a comparison, something like "Anytime is better than Casy at PvT."
The problem with a statement like that, however, the small sample size; we're only dealing with one game, and in a Bo5, it's rare that we'll have a set of completely balanced maps across the matchup in question. If we were able to watch Casy and Anytime play 25 games on each of those maps, it would be much easier to see a trend in the results that we could correlate to a difference in skill, but with the very limited number of results we have, a lot of talk of skill comes down to subjectivity and general knowledge of StarCraft.
I'm a pretty good player, if I may be so immodest, but more than that, I have a good grasp of what *needs* to be done in a particular game situation. It's just that I'm not always able to achieve those goals because, well, I don't multitask well enough. Having a strong grasp of what a player should be doing allows you to watch professional games and say, "Yes, he's playing really well. He's doing everything I would be doing and much, much more." Acquiring a strong grasp of StarCraft requires both playing and studying the game. Too many people are what I call "replay newbies," in that all they do is watch and copy replays. They don't know *why* they do something, just that "this gosu does it, so it must be good." They never challenge actions of these players or test new theories of their own. I encourage you to really consider the *why* in StarCraft: why certain things work in situations and why others do not. If you have a strong grasp of those concepts, it's not *too* difficult to see which player is "getting it done" moreso than the other player, regardless of the win/loss result--but that's not to say that the result is unimportant!
Finally, there are extenuating circumstances. We'll use MBC Hero for our example, because I like them. Let's say that Hero has the Proleague final coming up against SKT1, and Pusan has a game against Jju coming up in the MSL on a map that is terrible for PvT but decent for PvZ. Now then, it's safe to assume that, because the map is terrible for PvT and Hero is playing SKT1 (with their mass of strong Terrans), Hero is *not* having Pusan practice on it for the Proleague final; they're probably using him on a different map. And because a Bo1 in an individual league is far less important than the Proleague final, Pusan's attention is undoubtedly focused on the final. So if he loses to Jju in the MSL, should we really conclude that his PvZ skill is deteriorating, or that Anytime, who beat Jju three weeks ago, is the better at PvZ than Pusan? No, we can't make that judgement--not based upon those games, anyway. Just like Midas' series of jet-lag-induced losses after his trip to Italy, there are circumstances that should cause us not to overreact in our judgments of players. Don't underestimate the power of these circumstances!
I'm sure there are points I’m failing to discuss--and for that I apologize--but the number of factors that go into any win or loss is simply staggering, which means that it's best to look at the long-term when it comes to a player's skill, because inconsistencies filter out over a long enough period of time. The problem is that most people a) don't watch enough games and b) don't have good enough memories when it comes to games. I'm guilty of the latter; I’m not even sure it’s possible to remember every game clearly. And because it's so difficult/impossible to keep all these things in your mind, many, many people simply acquiesce to statistics without making the above considerations. Just don't be one of those people, and you'll already be doing better than the majority of TL.net. ^^
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wow, great question i've always been wondering about, thx for answering ilovezil/etter !
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Wow, Etter. I should ask you about life's problems if you write PMs that are that long.
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Nice post. Take an example from WCG 2005 for instance.
I dont think the foreigners highest level is as high as Silent_Controls highest level. Meaning Control can play pretty shitty, but he can also play very very good for example against Xellos at WCG. He's very inconsistent but comparing him with those players is far fetched imo. It really depends on how you compare players though, through consistency or the ability to reach a certain level at times.
This in addition to matchups, maps, positions, stakes, offline/online and other points mentioned.
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Beautiful post etter and great question zil, you stated (imo) the biggest or one of the biggest points, the level of pressure in a game/circumstances.
Great post.
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On March 07 2007 19:48 davidgurt wrote:
Wow, Etter. I should ask you about life's problems if you write PMs that are that long.
I always answer PMs more thoroughly than I do forum posts. The person who wrote the PM took the time to ask a question to me specifically; the least I can do is provide a comprehensive answer.
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1.) I think your example of Bisu vs Ra and build orders is a bad one. Ra made mistakes in each game that caused him to lose. He didn't play well enough to give his build orders the credit they deserve. In other words, Ra on a different day, or another Protoss, using the same builds, could have made them work.
I guess you've already decided that that's not the case, so I guess it's just my opinion against yours. But the specific example isn't really the issue. The fact that we disagree on what happened in that series shows how difficult it is to judge. We're both level-headed players and yet we draw contrasting conclusions. The problem is that we have no way of knowing how correct we are. We never get to check our answers. To some extent, we can look at future games and see if one trend continues or if the other one does, but that's hardly an exact science.
2.) It's hard to judge how well a player is playing. You say that you have a grasp of what needs to be done, so you can usually detect when a player is lacking. That's true for many a situation, as an experienced player can "see between the frames" into where exactly the progamer is coming up short. However, in the case of specific strategies or tactics, we never know what happened in the players' practice games. Perhaps we're watching a game and screaming "you just need to get more of this unit and you'll win! gees!" But maybe he had already tried that, and for a reason that isn't immediately obvious, it fails miserably.
For somewhat of an example in the Bisu Ra series, look at the last game. Ra had air control with his corsairs, but was skipping detection. Bisu knew this and ended up sacrificing a shuttle to the corsairs, while the DT shuttle went around the back. Maybe in Ra's practice games, he never had a player pull such a move off on him. So while many fans are watching, and thinking, "damn, Ra was just taking a risk by skipping cannons, Bisu got lucky", Ra might be thinking "damn, I never saw that coming" or "damn, I didn't think that'd actually work on me". So in fact it could have been a perfectly fair test of skill, and not some risky move that got called.
3.) I don't have a 3rd point, this is just a summary. Basically, we don't know when a player should be doing something or shouldn't be doing something, we don't know when to give them credit for a move or not. Yes, for the majority of moves in a game, experienced players have a good idea. However, there are frequently huge question marks over particular moves, often game-winning or game-losing moves, that we just don't know about.
PS: With the same type of thinking, I can argue that savior played well in his match against Bisu. As I stated in a different thread, I believe Savior would've beaten any other Protoss that night with his play. He didn't do something that any old Toss could have taken advantage of as dramatically as Bisu did. Bisu did something special to completely crack the monstrous ZvP of Savior.
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Osaka27154 Posts
A quality post that others should learn from.
Etter pointed out some good points about map balance/positional balance, matchups, and game significance. There are a couple intangibles that I would like to add to the list.
Firstly, about nerves. I think that most of us are desensitized when it comes to the nerves required to play on stage, after all we watch their emotionless faces all the time. However, if you have ever played a good player on bnet, did you ever get nervous? Did your hands shake for the first couple minutes? I know mine did. I think that there are some players who are naturally better at controlling their nerves, and other players are better prepared by their coaches.
When I see first time players play on TV, there are a lot of micro mistakes caused from nervous spam and misclicks. This is minor. And then, there are times where you get people like Gundam or Yooi, who are really great players, but simply cannot perform to their ability on stage (pro.NT_ShinyA is another great protoss who couldnt play offline). Unfortunately, If you saw Yooi's games form his first OSL, he looked like a B+ noob, and despite all of his preperation and hard work, his nerves shot him to pieces and he didnt stand a chance even before the game had started. Conversly, watching someone like savior shows just how valuable a level head can be.
Connected to that, I belive, is the ability to adapt and solve unexpected problems quickly. With such a detached mind, Savior is very able to quickly and accurately react to things unexpected. When he was four gated against vs daezang on peaks, I believe almost every other zerg would have failed in that game. However, with his analytical skills and cool head, savior was able to put up the exact amount of defense needed to repulse the attack and still maintain a winning edge. There are other players who, when faced with certain situations, are simply unable to generate the solutions needed to certain problems in a time and pressure situation.
Of course, the greatest on-the-fly innovator ever would have to be Boxer. He had a special ability to be able to solve small problems properly, easily, and with the least waste. If you look at the other side of the coin, there are many players, even professionals, who will send their entire army to kill a lurker drop. This is the anti-thesis of what I am talking about. It also seperates the A from the S class.
It is, in the end, these players which are able to generate intrest as well, because they can reach down and pull out the unexpected, solutions that we as the audience cannot generate ourselves.
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GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
This sort of discussion is far too deep for a forum post (or even a PM =P)
However, I would claim that Starcraft is a uniquely bad game to objectively judge skill in, and I'll try to explain why.
Starcraft is hindered by the fact that there is no objective method of telling how "close" a game was - as a result, the dichotomy forces us to make big judgements we are not always comfortable with.
Win statistics are useful only in the long term and with extreme samples (savior with over 80% ZvP is a reasonably good indicator of ZvP skill). Anything smaller than that, and we run into luck. Not just PvP / ZvZ BO luck, but little stupid things that can change the game so much. The skill level is so close that little things, things that we would never consider part of a player's skill, have enormous impacts on single games - and the format of our OSL does not help, seeing as how much of an impact single games make. NaDa got to the final despite probably not being anywhere close to the 2nd best player in the league - three times he had everything on the line in a deciding make-or-break game.
But say in one of those games something stupid happened. He didn't look at his minimap for one half of a second and missed a drop that while seemingly negligible immediate impact had dire long term consequences. Had any one of those gone the other way, we would be discussing a completely different Power Rank (no NaDa in top 10, definitely), a totally different KeSPA - and yet all because he didn't see his minimap for half a second? Is that really fair? Can we place any value in this system if such small happenings mean the difference between "Second Best in the World" and "Who The Hell is He?"
Look at how badly Reach is slumping. I guarantee you he doesn't actually suck right now. But getting out of his offline qualifiers is total hell, and unless you dominate everyone else (something he obviously cannot do right now), the only way you are qualifying is through almost pure luck. Things just haven't been clicking for him, and so we don't even consider him top 30 in the world - yet if he got into OSL somehow, he almost certainly could have made it to elimination rounds and (with a lucky break) semis or even finals. Then we would label him one of the Top Five Protosses in the World. This does not reek of preciseness.
Little mistakes also hurt Starcraft because you cannot bounce back easily in a single game. At the top level, doing one thing stupid such as misclicking your drones so they stack instead of spread, causing you to lose a couple extra workers in ZvZ - you are fucked. You are not coming back.
Other sports have some version of this problem, but to a much lesser extent. A random small mistake in soccer will, in all likelihood, not change the result. FA Cups are not won and lost because someone slipped in the mud in one game. And especially, in soccer - even if you make a mistake, at worst you give up a goal and you fight to get that goal back. In Starcraft, when you make a mistake, you probably just lose the game - period.
The last thing I want to talk about (but certainly not the last thought on this topic) is matchups. Say Casy beats GoodFriend TvT. Is Casy a better player than GoodFriend? Maybe. What if GoodFriend can beat every Protoss in the world and Casy loses to people like ahk-gosu? Is Casy still better? What if there weren't really that many Protosses in the world at all? Is Casy somehow suddenly a better player because of the scarcity of other people at a particular race? That is offensive to the very definition of skill.
So what, you say. Let's define people in terms of their matchups. Ignoring the fact that this requires the creation of 9 separate Power Rankings, since it becomes absolutely impossible to compare between two different ones, this is still a hazy question because of styles. NaDa might rape Pusan's style; Casy might rape Anytime's style; GoodFriend might rape Bisu's style. Who's best? How do we make the Best of TvP list? Judge by how good Pusan/Anytime/Bisu are at PvT? How do we make that list, without already having had a Best of TvP list?
The solution most other sports have to this sort of style-countering skill is to play a lot of games against a great many people, and see how they do against a common set of opponents. So we compare everyone's performances against Pusan Anytime AND Bisu. The problem in Starcraft is twofold - not only do players not play everyone else, but also the situation is always different each time (maps, pressure on winning the game, the stage you're playing on). You're no longer comparing on a ceteris paribus basis, and it's really hard to get anything out of it at all?
Given all of this, I think subjective rankings are the only possible way we can do it. Objective rankings are results-based and tell you nothing more than who was fortunate enough to win their leagues. And while I do not doubt that in many circumstances the winner of OSL/MSL is probably pretty clearly indisputably the best, sAviOr is an unusual circumstance. Look at the other three semifinalists in OSL - we know that IriS can beat Casy (though, like I said before, we can't really say definitively that IriS is BETTER than Casy, whatever that means). Do we know that NaDa can beat IriS? Can we even really say that NaDa can beat Casy if they play again? How do you objectively judge who among these three is best? Even if IriS 3-0's NaDa as well - if IriS couldn't beat a USEast Protoss noob and NaDa could beat all P's, is NaDa a better player (even though he never showed off his TvP abilities)? (And this is a fortunate instance, where they would all play the same mirror matchup against each other.)
So all we can do is watch the games and guess. And argue, and bicker, and yet remain so far from that elusive holy grail of objectivism.
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featured thread plz...
Great discussion
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it's a mind game people
after your hands get used to the speed requirements it's all in your head
i know all about the nerves  ; being a newb i assume that at least 75% of my oponents are better, or more experienced and it took me a while to control my nerves; but i just get cold; 3-5min in to the game my hands are cold-numb which cause me to make serious mistakes;
watching the replay i know almost every time what i did wrong; durnig the game i know what to do or what i sould have done but from some reason i didnt do it; most of the time is the lack of minerals; i need extra lings if teran moves out quickly or extra sunkens, or i teck too fast which means far less drones, stupidly loosing lings or lurks in the beginning and all that (and some more) means my expo will be very late and that spells - defeat
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For me it's pretty simple, I can determine how skilled a player is by watching his macro/micro/multitask/BOs during a couple of games, (at least 6-7 games).
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Among pros i find hard to tell. If you gave me a replay of professional gamers, i probably wouldnt be able to rank them.
I am still not fully certain what separates the top pros from the bottom ones.
My understanding of the game is not high enough to capture all the little decisions that go in a game.
I might see some unit choices, strategies, smart positionining, good micro, spending, and logic.
But I think control, timing, and certain macro problems i miss out.
For example the game Draco took from Midas on Gaia, still astonishes me how Midas could pump so many units after having his nat expo dennied 2-3 times...
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United States20661 Posts
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better.
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Osaka27154 Posts
On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better.
OBVIOUSLY this is the reason we both suck.
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I'm an old schooler too.
It is VERY obvious why we suck now.
Ugly people just play SC better....
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On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better.
I will not wash till I got acne. This must help
Great discussion!
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
On March 07 2007 22:46 GrandInquisitor wrote:
This sort of discussion is far too deep for a forum post (or even a PM =P)
However, I would claim that Starcraft is a uniquely bad game to objectively judge skill in, and I'll try to explain why.
Starcraft is hindered by the fact that there is no objective method of telling how "close" a game was - as a result, the dichotomy forces us to make big judgements we are not always comfortable with.
Win statistics are useful only in the long term and with extreme samples (savior with over 80% ZvP is a reasonably good indicator of ZvP skill). Anything smaller than that, and we run into luck. Not just PvP / ZvZ BO luck, but little stupid things that can change the game so much. The skill level is so close that little things, things that we would never consider part of a player's skill, have enormous impacts on single games - and the format of our OSL does not help, seeing as how much of an impact single games make. NaDa got to the final despite probably not being anywhere close to the 2nd best player in the league - three times he had everything on the line in a deciding make-or-break game.
But say in one of those games something stupid happened. He didn't look at his minimap for one half of a second and missed a drop that while seemingly negligible immediate impact had dire long term consequences. Had any one of those gone the other way, we would be discussing a completely different Power Rank (no NaDa in top 10, definitely), a totally different KeSPA - and yet all because he didn't see his minimap for half a second? Is that really fair? Can we place any value in this system if such small happenings mean the difference between "Second Best in the World" and "Who The Hell is He?"
Look at how badly Reach is slumping. I guarantee you he doesn't actually suck right now. But getting out of his offline qualifiers is total hell, and unless you dominate everyone else (something he obviously cannot do right now), the only way you are qualifying is through almost pure luck. Things just haven't been clicking for him, and so we don't even consider him top 30 in the world - yet if he got into OSL somehow, he almost certainly could have made it to elimination rounds and (with a lucky break) semis or even finals. Then we would label him one of the Top Five Protosses in the World. This does not reek of preciseness.
Little mistakes also hurt Starcraft because you cannot bounce back easily in a single game. At the top level, doing one thing stupid such as misclicking your drones so they stack instead of spread, causing you to lose a couple extra workers in ZvZ - you are fucked. You are not coming back.
Other sports have some version of this problem, but to a much lesser extent. A random small mistake in soccer will, in all likelihood, not change the result. FA Cups are not won and lost because someone slipped in the mud in one game. And especially, in soccer - even if you make a mistake, at worst you give up a goal and you fight to get that goal back. In Starcraft, when you make a mistake, you probably just lose the game - period.
The last thing I want to talk about (but certainly not the last thought on this topic) is matchups. Say Casy beats GoodFriend TvT. Is Casy a better player than GoodFriend? Maybe. What if GoodFriend can beat every Protoss in the world and Casy loses to people like ahk-gosu? Is Casy still better? What if there weren't really that many Protosses in the world at all? Is Casy somehow suddenly a better player because of the scarcity of other people at a particular race? That is offensive to the very definition of skill.
So what, you say. Let's define people in terms of their matchups. Ignoring the fact that this requires the creation of 9 separate Power Rankings, since it becomes absolutely impossible to compare between two different ones, this is still a hazy question because of styles. NaDa might rape Pusan's style; Casy might rape Anytime's style; GoodFriend might rape Bisu's style. Who's best? How do we make the Best of TvP list? Judge by how good Pusan/Anytime/Bisu are at PvT? How do we make that list, without already having had a Best of TvP list?
The solution most other sports have to this sort of style-countering skill is to play a lot of games against a great many people, and see how they do against a common set of opponents. So we compare everyone's performances against Pusan Anytime AND Bisu. The problem in Starcraft is twofold - not only do players not play everyone else, but also the situation is always different each time (maps, pressure on winning the game, the stage you're playing on). You're no longer comparing on a ceteris paribus basis, and it's really hard to get anything out of it at all?
Given all of this, I think subjective rankings are the only possible way we can do it. Objective rankings are results-based and tell you nothing more than who was fortunate enough to win their leagues. And while I do not doubt that in many circumstances the winner of OSL/MSL is probably pretty clearly indisputably the best, sAviOr is an unusual circumstance. Look at the other three semifinalists in OSL - we know that IriS can beat Casy (though, like I said before, we can't really say definitively that IriS is BETTER than Casy, whatever that means). Do we know that NaDa can beat IriS? Can we even really say that NaDa can beat Casy if they play again? How do you objectively judge who among these three is best? Even if IriS 3-0's NaDa as well - if IriS couldn't beat a USEast Protoss noob and NaDa could beat all P's, is NaDa a better player (even though he never showed off his TvP abilities)? (And this is a fortunate instance, where they would all play the same mirror matchup against each other.)
So all we can do is watch the games and guess. And argue, and bicker, and yet remain so far from that elusive holy grail of objectivism.
this is really what i always thought although i'm nowhere near as eloquent (maybe ;P) or motivated enough to write something up so nicely in a sc forum about all of it.
i didnt think of football as an example though,since i play tennis and often watch a lot of pro tennis where different players were clearly better than others in terms of style and mechanics or whatever you want to call it.
i also think tennis is a better comparison since it's also a 1v1 game and the post-match statistics are very similar to the sc post-match statistics minus the APM haha e.g. % of first serves in, % of second serves in, % service games won,
um i dont really know how to express the rest of what i want to say grandinquisitor if you get my drift you can elaborate on it ;P
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There must be a better way to determine skills.
im thinkin at least for the macro part i.e. who has better macro.
I beleive some1 should make a program that takes like 100 replays of a certain MU of one player and calculate this:
- How many seconds per game there was not enough supply
- how many seconds per game were the production facilities not producing units (perhaps including SCVs for the first 15 minutes of the game)
- How many seconds per game The minerals/gas were above 400 (example)
And then u add one more number into the equation. The number of interventions player had to make because of the actions his opponent did.(countering attacks, harrasing etc.) If some1 made a decent formula out of this, i believe we could take Luna games and tell who has good macro.
I believe this would work pretty good for distancing players not _too_ close in skills, which means Korean Kespa players are out of the question.
On Kespa level, i believe its all about Self confidence(determination), good strategy play(just like Liverpool beat Barca with good strategy even tho they have 'weaker' players, i think any good toss could've beaten Savior if he played instead of Bisu and used his BO) and luck.
Those things cannot really be measured so the results are all we are left with to compare the players.
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On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better.
sAviOr is not ugly...
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u gotta skate8152 Posts
On March 08 2007 07:08 Locke. wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better. sAviOr is not ugly...
Agreed.
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On March 08 2007 07:08 Locke. wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better. sAviOr is not ugly...
True and I don't think boxer's all-that either.
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thats what i call photoshoping ^,^
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!!! I'm exposed, but yea good discussions.
TL's got a fair share of intelligent minds, it seems.
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Everyone has their own way of judging skill. I like to look at a players thought process going into games.. How they open, how they plan to segue from the opening into the late game, etc. But that's probably because BW to me is a thinking game, the player's mind is his biggest weapon and not his hand speed. But there are people who look at the other side of the coin, BW is all in the technicality. You learn the basics strategically and that is all you need to know, everything else is all about being a powerhouse in terms of your macro and control ability. Both sides are somewhat viable though which is why BW is a cool game.
And many less experienced spectators tend to be just won over by seeing a player show a dominating performance or do something they haven't seen before. This I would call like "showmanship value" or something. Just the ability to impress a crowd.
And I'll use Boxer as an example of how I would judge skill somewhat objectively. To me Boxer is someone who I don't think ever won a TvP or TvT final and the classic Coca-Cola OSL vs Yellow that he won was on what I would go as far as saying are the most imbalanced maps ever used and if they had been used at this point in time half of them would be unplayable for Yellow with the other 2 being in Boxer's favor. His style was always based on creative and smart openings but he never showed the best skill in terms of long games or being able to effectively come up with strategies that could still be playable if they didn't work out for him in the early game. But he has amazing control and a lot of luck early on his career, you could say he really was a step above in terms of coming up with those special strategies or using Terran abilities to abuse maps. But for every top player ive seen Boxer dominate he has lost poorly to some no name P or Z in a qualifier or showmatch somewhere.. And although in the last couple years he changed up his style quite a bit to fit the new maps and managed to show great results I wouldn't feel comfortable saying he is the best player of all time. I'm left with conflicted feelings on him. If his career wasn't so long it would be easy to go "Oh well he is a really good Terran with a nice style in all match ups." He would be like UpMagic or something, a player who comes up with all-in or counter openings and gets on a roll using them. So im left unable to effectively rank Boxer because I don't even feel like BW is particularly suited for that type of analysis. Any of the top players could be near the top on a given day is how I feel about it.
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First, a question like which player is better is like asking who's penis is longer question, except that it cannot be measured by simply measuring. Its a question that invites comments, and rightly so. This is because we realize that worth or skill does not necessarily match up with who is currently winning the most or who at the top of kespa. We want some kind of answer that contacts to skill closer then that. Something that has to do with playing the game in a particular way.
I tend to think of the most skilled player as the one that plays the closest to the optimal. It is as simple as that. Well...almost, continue reading.
Regarding optimal play, the problem is that optimal play overall depends on what your opponent is doing, and you don't always know what your opponent is doing. So its not always clear cut that one player is playing better then another player in a particular case. Instead we must make do with the notion that they are playing the way that is likely to work best based on how the game works, what their think their opponent will do, etc. Some of this information and judgment may be wrong of course.
Like I typed above, its not quite that simple. Consider exceptions. As red.venom pointed out some the the craziest creative players, e.g., boxer, nal_ra, also can come out as the most foolish at times. Does this mean they have less skill? I would say it does not quite indicate that, but rather that they are willing to try new things and take risks. It depends on their reasoning why they thing something whether it works for their worth or against it.
In ethics there are few largely agreed upon axioms, but one of these is that one is not responsible if they could not have done otherwise. I suggest something similar for bw. If a player makes a good decision based on all available reasoning but it does not work out due to risky play by another (for instance), this should not count against their worth. These are basically situations in which the other player lucks out.
Of course, in the end, its pretty much impossible to realize when this criteria of playing optimally is met. We can only give reasons toward this end and come to an approximation. I suspect this question of who is better then who meets the same fate as the question of pvz imbalance. People are seeking generality where only particularity is truly appropriate for adequately explaining reality.
In some situation joe nobody may play better then reach, but reach will tend to play better overall. Now, I think, I have finally some to an agreeable general principle for myself about skill which is rooted in reality. The most skillful player is the one that tends to know how to play better then the others, and actually does if they wanted to. This qualifier "tends" allows one to go from the particular to the general without problem. This would also be the player who would perform best overall on all potential situations.
Note that I have ignored the question of nerves. Too bad for them, but it reduces how well they play, and thus has an effect on skill. I have also ignored the question of talent or practice. Again, too bad. If you want to get into the even more difficult project of judging skill relatively be my guest.
Edit- oh and I've also ignored how to determine a players worth, which was the main question I suppose. Haji covered some things. Having a good understanding of the game or particular situation and watching a lot of games of player(s) are some of the most important. If its not clear from my post however, I don't bother witch such an endeavor. Such a thing is either indicated quickly or comes to mind after much experience...or it doesn't, in which case I don't have adequate reasons to back up such a judgment.
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Great thread. I think that on a top level, psychology plays an enormous role (as demonstrated by Savior). Given that the 'skill level' is at least in the same neighborhood for a group of people, it boils down to luck, excellent decision making or psychology - and more likely a combination of the three.
Consider, if you have ever played CS. You're in a clutch situation with red HP, two opponents, and you gotta storm a bomb site with the bomb just planted. In my heyday I was pretty damn good at the game and on the servers I was playing on I would invade that bomb site with confidence and my chances of survival would increase tenfold (to 50% maybe, where most players would simply die trying). Playing against unknown opponents you believe are better than you, or having people watching for whom I felt I had something to prove, would make everything different - causing that little spasm in your hand that makes you miss the all-important headshot. Psychology.
Savior vs Nada. Psychology. Bisu vs Savior. Psychology. All in the same skill neighborhood. One had to win. Boxer vs Yellow in a certain bunker rush series - psychology deluxe. As has been pointed out, it very often boils down to a mind game therefore rendering objective skill judgements useless in most cases. I think we can safely assume that most of the upper echelon of BW progaming are very close in pretty much any BW-related skill - so close that the amateur player would have problems spotting the individual differences. While in some specific cases you would have a relatively wide difference (such as Boxer vs Zergman), in most it's about unquantifiable factors such as psychology, luck or excellent decision making.
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There is no simple solution to tell that. A low-skilled player might rape a high-skilled player just because he did the best possible build and made the right decisions, and maybe had a bit of luck (e.g. scouting a drop).
Of course, if a player is so bad that you can see it literally, e.g. because he builds the wrong stuff all the time, or because he has *horrible* macro or micro, then it's easy to tell. But, on a scale from newbie<intermediate<average<good<gosu, there is a certain threshold, I think somewhere in the "good" region, where you can't really tell anymore how skilled a player is. Then, you have to rely on statistics. The Korean pros sometimes lose in practice games vs. much lesser known/successful players, yet they have the better overall stats and better determination and most often reach their goals, where the others do not.
The higher the skill level, the more psychology matters, or form. But this doesn't mean that they are all truly 100% alike skill-wise. You just can't tell it for certain, and I bet even they can't tell it fo sure. So it comes down to personal preference, which style you like the most. But if you try to be objective, you can only rely on statistics to tell who is currently better than the other, although this may change in the future. We've seen many old stars fall (like Boxer or Reach). Did they "lose" their skill? Surely not. They even should have *better* chances because they have much more experience. If you ask me, they just "burned out", they know they have reached much so their will power isn't as strong as the new players' who really want to win something no matter what. It's all determination, and the same might happen to the current stars like Savior.
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I agree that they're not 100% equal skill-wise and I think I tried to make a point of that in my post. Motivation, as you correctly point out, is also very important.
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On March 08 2007 07:08 Locke. wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2007 00:01 Last Romantic wrote:
In the old days, skill and good looks were direcly proportional. Good looking gamers like Reach and YellOw and BoxeR did well.
Then, at some point [circa 2004] the opposite became true. Skill and good looks became INVERSELY proportional. Now we have ugly people like sAviOr and iris dominating.
T-T I liked the old method of measuring skill better. sAviOr is not ugly...
Wtf are you talking about ? all the progamers look like nerdy homos. either that or they just look averagely plain looking.
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Since nony and dj were talking about the Bisu vs. Nal_Ra games, I became interested, and took a look. This post also serves to help demonstrate what I mean by judging optimal play. So, I looked in depth at game2 @ reverse temple. Harder to judge from vod, but fastest 1tick = 1sec, so easy enough.
Bisu attacked at 7:50 with 12g/1rs/1z. Ra had 9g/1r/2z at this point. Now, attacking at 7:50 with 12g/1rs/1z is pretty good. I know bisu has a damn efficient build that he probably planned out carefully. My b.o. for a good 1gate zcorez robo range build has 10g/1rs/2z at 7:30min on 8patch main map, thats before travel distance.
There were a number of micro/control mistakes Ra made. One goon was roaming around in his base when he was attacked. His zeals were behind his goons and did not do much good. Killed shuttle which did no good. Etc.
But, what I'm more concerned with is his build. So, I ran a practice example of a zcorez 6:00 expo build myself on 8patch normal lt (Ra expoed at around 5:50). At 7:50 I had 11g/1r/5z, with the latest two goons popping out 5sec before. The difference in unit numbers is due to build efficiency. Ra went for range and robo off of one gate, while I went for them them after two (which would have worked perfectly fine this game). Also, he went for a battery, which I typically would not suggest. Probably did some other things as well, but thats the best I can point out without the replay. The point is that this shows me Ra is farther from the optimal than bisu is in micro as well as build.
DJ typed, "Bisu happened to pick better builds" as If he did not have solid reasons behind the build. He also types, "You can argue that those choices are a form of skill, but that's a pretty hollow argument when neither player was able to conclusively scout the other." I don't quite agree with that. Using his terms, bisu picked a better build. If this is based on good reasons, then it did not just happen, then I would consider it as a skillful choice. Which I'm rather sure it was, being familiar with bisu's play having watched over 50 of his games. And thus, lastly, "Bisu just had a good day." I would disagree with the fact that Bisu just had a good day, as if he did not earn it.
So, Nony is correct in that in that Ra did not play well enough to give his build orders the credit they deserve because of those micro mistakes. I'll go one further saying that he also did not give the kind of build he went for the credit it deserves either, due to build efficiency reasons I have pointed out in this post. Not so difficult, and I think dj would agree at this point.
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On March 08 2007 19:55 Knickknack wrote:
I tend to think of the most skilled player as the one that plays the closest the the optimal. Its as simple as that.
I have a similar theory about optimal play in SC. Offcouse we cant define that kind of play to a complex rts game, so I borrowed ideas from 2-player board games regarding optimal strategies and winners. I was thinking about PvZ matchup/imbalance (if there is one) and came up with the idea that tosses lose too much because they play less optimal.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/6817/showimageasprealfileffplo7.jpg)
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