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In 2013, often the predicted favorites didn't win the big SC2 tournaments.
Many (at the time) underdogs went on to win the title, e.g. Maru, Bomber, Dear, sOs etc..
In addition, many previous champions were unable to repeat their feats.
It seems that nowadays, as a top level player, it is a lot harder to get an edge over your opponents.
There is a pool of something like 30 players that could all be potential WCS champions.
Comparison of WCS season finals:
+ Show Spoiler +
To further illustrate this lack of consistence, let's take a look at the Ro8 players of the 3 WCS season finals of 2013:
Season 1 finals Ro8:
Innovation
sOs
Soulkey
Mvp
Roro
Alicia
ForGG
aLive
Season 2 finals Ro8:
Bomber
Jaedong
Taeja
First
Scarlett
Rain
NaNiwa
aLive
Season 3 finals Ro8:
Dear
Soulkey
Maru
Trap
ByuL
Oz
MC
MMA
We can see that only Soulkey and aLive made it twice into the Ro8.
It can hardly get any more random than that.
Comparison of GSLs:
+ Show Spoiler +GSL Ro8 comparison:+ Show Spoiler +GSL: Players that made it to Ro8:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WHVyvRA.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sSBGWfZ.png) Number of times in GSL Ro8:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rsa45Od.png) GSL: Players that made it to Ro4:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/817hSdi.png) Number of times in GSL Ro4:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2r21z4x.png) GSL: Players that made it to the GSL finals:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0ly99h5.png) Number of times in GSL finals:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fltyLIN.png) GSL Winners:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eG9sS8g.png) Number of GSL wins:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HPFzCrJ.png)
In other sports there seems to be much more dominance and consistence of single individuals.
e.g.: Vitali Klitschko, Novak Djokovic, Magnus Carlsen, Usain Bolt, etc...
Comparison of tennis Grand Slams:
+ Show Spoiler +Tennis Grand Slams Ro4 comparison:+ Show Spoiler +Players that made it to Ro4:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/T0JjJ2Z.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZWb8Ye4.png) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5BJ7V3i.png) Number of times in Ro4 (out of 44 Grand Slams):![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cv0SIB3.png)
Why are SC2 results so inconsistent?
ANSWER WIKI:
Tournament format
+ Show Spoiler +- Matches are too short; BO3 and BO5 are too volatile
- Knockout vs. round-robin format: The knockout format greatly increases elements of luck
- No seeding at tournaments
- There is no world wide accepted Elo ranking system
- Too many tournaments
- Excess travel, poor tournament conditions, and lack of practice hamper the best players
Game design
+ Show Spoiler +- Not enough depth of micro
- Whoever wins the first big fight tends to win the game
- Units die too fast
- Games reach max limits very fast
- All ins and timings are incredibly strong
- Too many options in the opening, too few in the late game
- Fog of war: Scouting is not available all the time
- Death balls make it hard to get an edge
- Burst macro mechanics (mules, warp gates, larva injects)
- The game has not enough strategic depth
- Lack of defender high ground advantage --> all-ins
- Even when people scout, pros can swap builds so fast that it doesn't really matter.
Other reasons
+ Show Spoiler +- The game is far from being "figured out"
- Everyone has off-days
- The skill ceiling is too low: there is no real skill distinctor at the top level
- The skill ceiling is too high: it's hard for the pros to stay on top
- The KESPA switch shook up 2013
- The HotS switch shook up 2013
- SC2 is still "new" compared to BW
- Artosis curse
- Replay system + millions of VODs/streams
- Patches: Races get buffs or get nerfed after a period of dominance
- A lot of other factors affecting the result other than skill
Refuting the proposition
+ Show Spoiler +- There is actually no unpredictability in SC2
- Many other sports have great variance
- There was just as much variance in BW
- Some top players do show consistence (Soulkey, Taeja)
- Player consistency is hard to compare because of many different tournament formats
- You cannot compare SC2 with tennis, boxing or chess
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My opinions:
- Depth of micro is not enough
- Whoever wins the first big fight tend to win the game - comebacks are virtually non existent
- Units die too fast so it doesn't matter if you are Flash/Jaedong/Soulkey. If you happen to not pay attention for a sec enough units can be killed so that you more or less already have lost
- Games reach max limits very fast. Macro is easy and not rewarding so players like Flash "can't outmacro" the opponent just as easy because the difference between the worst pro and best pro at macro isn't that big
So I guess it's a combination of not enough depth and the volalite units vs too much dps.
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United Kingdom36161 Posts
You'll probably get a load of different responses about the nature of the game, but in part it's simply because series are so short. BO3s and BO5s are really incredibly volatile things.
It's kinda like playing only one set in tennis.
In chess, you get tournaments where it's all play all (usually) so everyone has the whole tournament to perform. In FIDE's short knockout world championships in the 90s and 2000s, there were a lot of "random" chess 'world champions' - Khalifman, Ponamariov, Khazimdzhanov (spelling) - random, quite strong GMs, but not actually world class. These tournaments are a pretty good equivalent of how SC2 tournaments are structured tbh, and the outcome is STILL really unpredictable, even though chess is a game of perfect information/much less (if any) luck.
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Rather than just stating the retarded mechanics and unit synergies that are present in the game, i'll share some insight. 95% of match ups in Starcraft 2 resemble rock paper scissor more than Brood War.
#sadtimes
User was warned for this post
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It's really simple: There is a lot of randomness in the game. The build order plays a huge part in any game, and obviously you cannot know the opening of your opponent.
So you end up with either an advantage or a disadvantage right from the start. And the longer the game goes on, the more time you have to get things (further) into your favor with your skill.
If you know what your opponent will do, and your skill is roughly equal to his, you have already won. That's why EG/TL kept losing in Proleague, and that's why Korean teams (Kespa especially) are all about figuring out how you play.
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East Gorteau22261 Posts
On December 11 2013 21:48 sMi.SyMPhOnY wrote:
Rather than just stating the retarded mechanics and unit synergies that are present in the game, i'll share some insight. 95% of match ups in Starcraft 2 resemble rock paper scissor more than Brood War.
#sadtimes
Please.
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you mean the skill ceiling, right? because the skill required to play chess is pretty low, it takes a bit to be good at it though.
and i don't think so. i don't think any player is close to playing perfectly. so give it some time.
i have no idea what player does what after winning, some probably take it a bit easier after winning something, but your drive to win is still there after one big victory.
how is the fog of war random? it's doing the exact same thing every time. i'm not sure i get your point on that one. if you mean the "coinflippieness" of, say, PvP, top level protoss still get insane winrates, for example parting, currently at a 71.93% winratio in pvp on TLPD.
last point i don't think we can really say anything about that, since we dont really now much about the exact training schedule the teams have. we only know they all play a crapload of starcraft.
so i personally have no idea, but i don't consider it a problem, either. (btw i think that discussion came up before)
there is nothing worse for the excitement of a sport than one team/athlete dominating it all. what you want is probably 4 or 5 players at the absolute top, developing rivalries, but i don't think that having a few more competing players will hurt.
maybe starcraft 2 needs some time to find that true bonjwa (tho Jaedong will totally dominate everyone next year), maybe it's not meant to be?
noob question here: how long did it take brood warto have those legends distinguish themselves from the rest?
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How come thread quality on Teamliquid is so unpredictable?
I don't want to come of as an asshole, but there are literally a myriad of other threads discussing the same topic, we don't need another one. Only causea unnecessary BW vs SC2 drama.
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I think the control utilized over the game by David kim has a direct relation to this issue. It seems when someone is dominating races get Buffs or units get Nerfed....Then it sets back the player that is dominating and basically resets everyone so they have to relearn major parts of strategy never allowing anyone to get to that Bonjwa State that Jaedong and Flash were....
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
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I'd say we got plenty of consistency, the best players place highly in more tournaments. Take JD and Soulkey for example, JD practically top 2 in any tour he plays, Soulkey never below top 8.
One player doesn't have to win everything in order to show the skill ceiling is high in this game, and with multiple top performers it keeps things interesting.
Besides there's still patches and an expansion coming up to shake things up, after this it will most likely become a bit more stable.
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On December 11 2013 22:00 lichter wrote:
You are comparing SC2 to singles sports with tournament structures different from SC2. The tournaments in SC2 are more akin to Basketball playoffs or the Champions League. If you look at the list of champions from those tournaments you'll see that it's actually not that random. It is a ridiculous comparison.
If you look at the winrates between the best teams within sports with similar tournament structures and the best players in SC2 you will also see that they compare favorably.
This.
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Honestly the "fan favorites" tend to get way overhyped resulting into a so called upset.
Also, cause of the different playstyles some players got an inherent advantage compared to others (teaja's super solid defence against Life who uses a lot of counterattacks"
If anything the first year or so with Mvp,Nestea and MC on top actually proved the game isn't as volatile as people want to belive.
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Part of it is that it seems the short-term condition a player is in matters a lot, and there are a lot of players who practice really seriously for a while, then get distracted by life and don't keep it up uniformly. Since that's kept private, it looks like randomness to the public.
But also, it's really not that random. At most tournaments there are 2-3 clear favorites and often one of them wins, almost always one or two of them are in finals. It's more random than tennis, but less random than lots of other sports.
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There is no unpredictability, at least at the top in korea. We have a small pool of constant top finishers for HotS now, with Dear, Soulkey, Rain and Maru. look at the last big korean events. Those are the names you will read there in later rounds over and over again. Ofc from time to time, you have surprises amongst them. That´s what makes the game fun and exciting to watch. But those 4 are nearly allways around top4/top8. Pretty constant to me.
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On one hand I think it's the other way around, the skill cap is so high and that's why it's hard for the pros to stay on top. On the other hand, I don't really agree that the results are that unpredictable. Like someone else pointed out, several players have been playing very consistently.
The game is dynamic. You cannot compare it with sports that have had more or less static rules for decades.
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You have 3 MU, how the best players do in those varies with the meta and practice. In each MU there are several builds and styles that you are good and worse against.
Then you have maps that can be good for you or your opponents style, map trends that change from year to year etc.
Then you have tournament structure that can for example have one player getting his best MU over and over again while another gets his worst.
So many variables that can be enough to make a "favorite" drop maps or games. But overall I think there is a pretty clear elite of players that keep winning and getting good results against the best, and they arent 30 of them.
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I think the game's metagame is just that volatile. The game is far from being "figured out", unlike Brood War.
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I don't think it is too unpredictable.
For example Maru placing high frequently and winning osl wasn't that unpredictable tbh. He has been very long time one of the top players. Even though casters tend to "criticize" him for cheesy play that is not the truth he was and still is more than capable to win anyone in the world with macro game.
And like TeeTS said there are usually same players in top 8 GSL/OSL just look at Innovation, Maru, Soulkey for example I can't even remember when wasn't Soulkey top 8 GSL since his debut...
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dAOwk7C.png)
