There are probably some related threads somewhere on TL, but I couldn't find them, so sorry if that's the case.
I just watched Maru's first televised win and I'm honestly very confused by the level of play displayed. How is this even possible? It's not like these guys are playing RTS for the first time, they are actual pros who spent theirs days practicing the game! Also there was Brood war before for years, so how is it possible that a pro player (or even semi-pro) would have 600 gaz banked up before throwing down the spire, without ling speed? It even seem like they can't continuously produce workers?
I've heard people say diamonds or even plat players today could compete in the early GSLs and I never believed them until now. I always tought these weirds 1 base build people were doing in WOL were just the best (or at least decent) responses to the prevalent meta. (I started watching with HotS)
So were early WoL players just plain bad or is just the case that the meta was very weird? What is the actual, objective level difference between a diamond today and a gsl contender back then?
"I've heard people say diamonds or even plat players today could compete in the early GSLs"
people who say that are dumb. early players look bad because they don't play current meta and didn't figure out the specific micro tricks that are used now, but the actual level of macro and micro is beyond most current masters. also old lost temple is such a dumb map, current meta builds wouldn't work at all with the rush distances
On June 26 2018 08:19 rauk wrote: "I've heard people say diamonds or even plat players today could compete in the early GSLs"
people who say that are dumb. early players look bad because they don't play current meta and didn't figure out the specific micro tricks that are used now, but the actual level of macro and micro is beyond most current masters
That quote is an exaggeration for sure, but a lot of the actual macro and micro of the players was pretty bad back then. It's not just a metagame thing, the mechanical skill has increased greatly.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
Cella was absolute garbaggio as a player and barely played a few games before turning into a coach. There are many things that factor in to determine whether one time or another was more competitive and I don't feel like diving into it, tho I will say that I just don't think that a nearly dead sc2 (nowadays) is as competitive in many many ways compared to say 1 year into WoL or HotS.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
First of all, MKP became famous in the second GSL which finished less than 4 months after sc2 was released. Strategies and timings were not fleshed out yet, so all-ins and other kinds of weird strategies were fairly successful. That's how bitbybit pulling scvs on offense every game or kyrix bane-busting his opponents all the time was possible. It is not like players had terrible mechanics, the issue was simply that build orders and timings for macro openings were not crisp yet.
Also, MKP's marine splitting was mind-blowing because he went pure bio with mostly marines against ling/bane... no tanks to counter banes or drops to pull apart his opponent... and he did it several games in a row... and he did it first against kyrix who was known for early- and mid-game bane busts... and he won the series...
Yes, the GSL open seasons had some very lopsided games in them that made some players look like complete noobs. However, mechanically the top players were pretty decent, albeit mostly weaker than today's pros (after all there is a bit of a difference between practicing for 5 months and practicing for 5+ years). The issue was that there was no clear "standard" play and strategies were not refined yet. Additionally, there were a few genuinely terrible players that slipped through the open seasons' preliminaries. By the time, code S rolled around, top players already had top mechanics even by today's standards.
Lets just say that MKP's micro back then was still vastly better than what you see today from a lot of bottom tier terrans, all foreign terrans included.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
First of all, MKP became famous in the second GSL which finished less than 4 months after sc2 was released. Strategies and timings were not fleshed out yet, so all-ins and other kinds of weird strategies were fairly successful. That's how bitbybit pulling scvs on offense every game or kyrix bane-busting his opponents all the time was possible. It is not like players had terrible mechanics, the issue was simply that build orders and timings for macro openings were not crisp yet.
Also, MKP's marine splitting was mind-blowing because he went pure bio with mostly marines against ling/bane... no tanks to counter banes or drops to pull apart his opponent... and he did it several games in a row... and he did it first against kyrix who was known for early- and mid-game bane busts... and he won the series...
Yes, the GSL open seasons had some very lopsided games in them that made some players look like complete noobs. However, mechanically the top players were pretty decent, albeit mostly weaker than today's pros (after all there is a bit of a difference between practicing for 5 months and practicing for 5+ years). The issue was that there was no clear "standard" play and strategies were not refined yet. Additionally, there were a few genuinely terrible players that slipped through the open seasons' preliminaries. By the time, code S rolled around, top players already had top mechanics even by today's standards.
I understand that MKP's play was incredible at the time. It really serves to cement my point-- he figured out some basic micro stuff that utterly abused the lack of mechanics of his opponents to launch him into wins until other players caught up enough mechanically to hold his pushes.
Top players 5 years ago couldn't hold the jock straps of current players right now. That's not even debatable. Players used to win against other top players by dropping two locations at once while pushing the front. That's just midgame foreplay now, and we lambaste a player that loses to it for their poor play. Complete scouting, microing, defending/attacking on multiple fronts, counter-attacks to force retreats etc. are all completely standard parts of top-level play that are EXPECTED at this level now.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
Not gonna step in the discussion, but the part when Artosis goes "wow super reaper micro!" when maru kill one slow lings with a reaper made me laugh so hard, but ya the whole game is so stupid.
By the way I didn't watch/play early wol, was creep no a thing?
Edit: nevermind I am gonna step in the discussion It's kind of surprising how bad, or at least flawed these games are, you would guess that long time RTS players would jump in more quickly, some of those build just seems to make no sense at all and the mechanics are sometime strangely lacking. I am not talking overall WOL here just the first few months of open, I watched a couple of games on youtube, maybe some of them were really relative new comer to RTS because I fell like if you take a couple of high master/gm SC2 players and put them in lets say AOE2 for 3-4 months it's probably not gonna look nice but it will be better then this. Anyway perhaps I'm wrongs it dosen't really matter.
I can say with confidence, If you guys would be sitting in front of a crowd of people who are making noise then your play would be different. I bet its the guy talking who first of all takes 2-5 practice matches, then gets overwhelmed by enemy cheese, after that match he warms up and eventually after 3 hours of gameplay he plays top notch professional level Starcraft 2 match. After looking at good performance overall he thinks its the same as sitting on stage playing somebody. Have you ever weared earmuffs during play ? Probably that would make some people loose their supply count in the first match :D
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
First of all, MKP became famous in the second GSL which finished less than 4 months after sc2 was released. Strategies and timings were not fleshed out yet, so all-ins and other kinds of weird strategies were fairly successful. That's how bitbybit pulling scvs on offense every game or kyrix bane-busting his opponents all the time was possible. It is not like players had terrible mechanics, the issue was simply that build orders and timings for macro openings were not crisp yet.
Also, MKP's marine splitting was mind-blowing because he went pure bio with mostly marines against ling/bane... no tanks to counter banes or drops to pull apart his opponent... and he did it several games in a row... and he did it first against kyrix who was known for early- and mid-game bane busts... and he won the series...
Yes, the GSL open seasons had some very lopsided games in them that made some players look like complete noobs. However, mechanically the top players were pretty decent, albeit mostly weaker than today's pros (after all there is a bit of a difference between practicing for 5 months and practicing for 5+ years). The issue was that there was no clear "standard" play and strategies were not refined yet. Additionally, there were a few genuinely terrible players that slipped through the open seasons' preliminaries. By the time, code S rolled around, top players already had top mechanics even by today's standards.
I understand that MKP's play was incredible at the time. It really serves to cement my point-- he figured out some basic micro stuff that utterly abused the lack of mechanics of his opponents to launch him into wins until other players caught up enough mechanically to hold his pushes.
Top players 5 years ago couldn't hold the jock straps of current players right now. That's not even debatable. Players used to win against other top players by dropping two locations at once while pushing the front. That's just midgame foreplay now, and we lambaste a player that loses to it for their poor play. Complete scouting, microing, defending/attacking on multiple fronts, counter-attacks to force retreats etc. are all completely standard parts of top-level play that are EXPECTED at this level now.
MKP did not invent anything. Players were well aware that you don't leave your bio under a storm till they die and you dont move command your marines clump into banelings. He became famous because he went pure bio against a player that was basically only ever doing bane busts and beat him with much better mechanics despite technically being up against the counter composition to his own units.
Any discussion comparing players from the early GSLs and today's players is utterly pointless, because it was a completely different game. It's one thing to do a double drop while pushing at the front when you start with 12 workers and can afford to be maxed out in under 10 minutes with double upgrades running for a while, it is a whole different ball-park to do it when you have to commit everything you have to this move. Today's Zest would go down just as quickly if warped back in time to WoL where the economy is completely different and half the units are missing as Nestea would if he tried to contest today's LotV pros.
Of course, mechanics were pretty often not quite on point during the open seasons, but the last open season ended less than 5 months after sc2's release... Furthermore, due to the lack of crisp timings and build orders some mechanically bad players made some deep runs by simply abusing certain all-ins only to be stomped by somebody who was mechanically way superior than them.
Your whole point was that players were "bad" back then. This kind of depends on your definition of back then. If you mean the open season, well.... no kidding... who would have thought that people playing a game released a few months prior would not be doing as well as players practicing for half a decade or longer... If you mean to include the entirety of WoL, then you are plain wrong. Both mechanics and strategies improved rapidly, so that the top players were really good after half an year upon sc2's release, never mind after a whole year.
On June 26 2018 08:16 VengefulTree wrote: There are probably some related threads somewhere on TL, but I couldn't find them, so sorry if that's the case.
I just watched Maru's first televised win and I'm honestly very confused by the level of play displayed. How is this even possible? It's not like these guys are playing RTS for the first time, they are actual pros who spent theirs days practicing the game! Also there was Brood war before for years, so how is it possible that a pro player (or even semi-pro) would have 600 gaz banked up before throwing down the spire, without ling speed? It even seem like they can't continuously produce workers?
I've heard people say diamonds or even plat players today could compete in the early GSLs and I never believed them until now. I always tought these weirds 1 base build people were doing in WOL were just the best (or at least decent) responses to the prevalent meta. (I started watching with HotS)
So were early WoL players just plain bad or is just the case that the meta was very weird? What is the actual, objective level difference between a diamond today and a gsl contender back then?
Thanks
It's not a fair comparison. You're comparing a meta of a game recently released to a game that's been out for 8 years. Sure players might look bad back then, but you have to remember that they were still miles ahead of the average player at that time.
To say the average diamond and plat player today can compete with GSL players of back then is a stretch. If we were to give 2010 Maru replays and about a week of practice using his 2018 Maru build, he would get GM on all server easily. For example, Kespa players only took about a month of practice before they got competitive. Also, I am pretty sure that even in 2010 GSL, MKP's micro are still better than diamond/master players today.
Early players in WoL weren't bad, the metagame just weren't as developed.
Strategies were undiscovered so players looked worse, but I guarantee you that their mechanics and game sense were still way above the average Master level player today.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
Players weren't bad, it was the maps being terrible. The map that game was on was Lost Temple so you had to basically meta the meta of the meta since there were ridiculous things like proxy factory thor on the cliff and other builds that could straight up kill you if you didn't counter-build.
Looks like that game Cella was saving money cause he wasn't sure yet if it was gonna be some cliff bs or just up front attack.
All the old maps were just really, really bad lol and most of them either massively favored Terran or massively favored Zerg, and were entire irrelevant for Protoss because Protoss either warp gate all-ined or tried to turtle 3 base every game.
Anyone remember that reporter who came to cover the first SCII open and played in the preliminaries? He ended up qualifying and actually playing in the Ro32. His name was Apple I believe. I always thought it was hilarious how that worked out. Given, I can only presume he must've at least played the game a bit to make it that far, but it does say a lot about the mechanics at the time lol.
As mentioned, a lot of it came down to the meta and maps which are linked hand in hand. I also believe that the mechanics were bad at the time and those got a lot better as time passed.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
To be fair 1/1 at 15 mins is a different beast in LOTV than it was in WoL. Not to say there wasn't anything to improve, but it's important to remember the fact that WoL and LoTV are almost two completely different games due to balance and mechanical changes.
On June 26 2018 10:37 K3Nyy wrote: Strategies were undiscovered so players looked worse, but I guarantee you that their mechanics and game sense were still way above the average Master level player today.
2010/2011 SjoW could bury any 2018 NA and EU Masters player. He is my favourite non-Korean of all time. Innovative out-of-the-box thinker... super nice guy... great class act... and a scarey killer instinct.
Arguably play has gotten worse since a lot of the major team houses disbanded in Korea, meaning that many players no longer have the benefit of training in the team house environment.
Also, probably not fair to compare against 2010 - as other posters have mentioned, the game was new and a lot of players were trying to get acclimated to the game. That being said, I don't think the play in 2011 is inferior to today - the map pool and meta are different.
Nowadays, a lot of early aggressive options have been neutered due to larger maps, higher starting worker counts, safer expansions, etc. When that early aggressive threat is on your mind, it makes it more difficult to flawlessly execute a build - but it doesn't make the players inferior.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
To be fair 1/1 at 15 mins is a different beast in LOTV than it was in WoL. Not to say there wasn't anything to improve, but it's important to remember the fact that WoL and LoTV are almost two completely different games due to balance and mechanical changes.
Oh sure, the ~2 minute head start (old time) and changed clock rate make a difference, but being at 15 minutes old time and 2/2 not even started? That was standard for a lot of games.
Zergs would sit on Lair tech until the 25 minute mark or later while floating 400/400 minimum the whole time. Players that did go Hive literally used to just skip over Adrenal Glands because apparently a 17% boost to DPS wasn't worth a 200/200 lategame investment (hint: it was). All sorts of terrible macro decision-making abounded that hat nothing to do with "meta" stuff.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
To be fair 1/1 at 15 mins is a different beast in LOTV than it was in WoL. Not to say there wasn't anything to improve, but it's important to remember the fact that WoL and LoTV are almost two completely different games due to balance and mechanical changes.
pretty much. WoL was much rougher with units like infestors binding MMT and doing damage etc... Need a lot more speed to split to avoid all that stuff. Thankfully Blizzard nerfed them and made it a projectile haha.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
First of all, MKP became famous in the second GSL which finished less than 4 months after sc2 was released. Strategies and timings were not fleshed out yet, so all-ins and other kinds of weird strategies were fairly successful. That's how bitbybit pulling scvs on offense every game or kyrix bane-busting his opponents all the time was possible. It is not like players had terrible mechanics, the issue was simply that build orders and timings for macro openings were not crisp yet.
Also, MKP's marine splitting was mind-blowing because he went pure bio with mostly marines against ling/bane... no tanks to counter banes or drops to pull apart his opponent... and he did it several games in a row... and he did it first against kyrix who was known for early- and mid-game bane busts... and he won the series...
Yes, the GSL open seasons had some very lopsided games in them that made some players look like complete noobs. However, mechanically the top players were pretty decent, albeit mostly weaker than today's pros (after all there is a bit of a difference between practicing for 5 months and practicing for 5+ years). The issue was that there was no clear "standard" play and strategies were not refined yet. Additionally, there were a few genuinely terrible players that slipped through the open seasons' preliminaries. By the time, code S rolled around, top players already had top mechanics even by today's standards.
I understand that MKP's play was incredible at the time. It really serves to cement my point-- he figured out some basic micro stuff that utterly abused the lack of mechanics of his opponents to launch him into wins until other players caught up enough mechanically to hold his pushes.
Top players 5 years ago couldn't hold the jock straps of current players right now. That's not even debatable. Players used to win against other top players by dropping two locations at once while pushing the front. That's just midgame foreplay now, and we lambaste a player that loses to it for their poor play. Complete scouting, microing, defending/attacking on multiple fronts, counter-attacks to force retreats etc. are all completely standard parts of top-level play that are EXPECTED at this level now.
MKP did not invent anything. Players were well aware that you don't leave your bio under a storm till they die and you dont move command your marines clump into banelings. He became famous because he went pure bio against a player that was basically only ever doing bane busts and beat him with much better mechanics despite technically being up against the counter composition to his own units.
Any discussion comparing players from the early GSLs and today's players is utterly pointless, because it was a completely different game. It's one thing to do a double drop while pushing at the front when you start with 12 workers and can afford to be maxed out in under 10 minutes with double upgrades running for a while, it is a whole different ball-park to do it when you have to commit everything you have to this move. Today's Zest would go down just as quickly if warped back in time to WoL where the economy is completely different and half the units are missing as Nestea would if he tried to contest today's LotV pros.
Of course, mechanics were pretty often not quite on point during the open seasons, but the last open season ended less than 5 months after sc2's release... Furthermore, due to the lack of crisp timings and build orders some mechanically bad players made some deep runs by simply abusing certain all-ins only to be stomped by somebody who was mechanically way superior than them.
Your whole point was that players were "bad" back then. This kind of depends on your definition of back then. If you mean the open season, well.... no kidding... who would have thought that people playing a game released a few months prior would not be doing as well as players practicing for half a decade or longer... If you mean to include the entirety of WoL, then you are plain wrong. Both mechanics and strategies improved rapidly, so that the top players were really good after half an year upon sc2's release, never mind after a whole year.
We had YEARS of "SC2 is deathball" complaints because top players literally weren't good enough to manage multiple forces effectively on multiple screen widths, much less multiple fronts. The very best players separated themselves by being able to occasionally do multiple things at once without sacrificing effectiveness on any given front, because that was, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN, better than deathballing. Top players just straight up were not good enough to leverage the benefits of spreading out the map.
That is now standard top-level play. That's the minimum bar to not get laughed out of the room.
There is literally no difference in doing a double drop now while pushing the front than there was then, the only real significant change is that the early game was sped up by a couple of minutes. Sometimes this meant the old early game stretched even longer, but that has no bearing on what players could have been capable of for midgame play had they been better players.
Look at Maru vs. Zest: Zest played fine. Not his best, but there was nothing wrong with his play. It was certainly of the caliber of 2014 pros, at minimum. Maru made him look like he was standing still. Just a total stomp.
BitByBit was a GSL player. That's all I have to add to this discussion. I have no real dog in this fight, I just want us all to realize that this was a thing that happened.
U have to add that there have been numerous of patches since the early days. They used those units / compositions because it was op (like morrows tournament win with reaperrush)
On June 26 2018 09:25 IshinShishi wrote: Lets just say that MKP's micro back then was still vastly better than what you see today from a lot of bottom tier terrans, all foreign terrans included.
I'd be surprised if today's bronze league terrans (aka bottom tier) had micro comparable to MarineKing's
So maybe you can get better then them now by practising a proven safe build 100 times over and have good macro at 3 bases. But back then you would die to a 4-gate someone did a 100 times over. So you would never get to practice your 3 base macro build a 100 times. Most games at 3+ bases were pure improvisation and nobody can have perfect macro while improvising.
On June 26 2018 11:25 BigFan wrote: Anyone remember that reporter who came to cover the first SCII open and played in the preliminaries? He ended up qualifying and actually playing in the Ro32. His name was Apple I believe. I always thought it was hilarious how that worked out. Given, I can only presume he must've at least played the game a bit to make it that far, but it does say a lot about the mechanics at the time lol.
What? LOL. Do you have a link to an article or a discussion about this reporter that qualified for the Ro32?
Most grandmasters nowadays would get shat on if they teleported back into early GSL. WoL was very different from LotV in term of set of skills required. There were a lot of terrific players who could eliminate you (MKP, Bomber, Mvp, NesTea, MC, and later a lot more with MMA, Polt, TaeJa, etc.)
The metagame was so volatile that you needed to be able to play outside of your comfort zone a lot more than today.
On June 26 2018 08:27 rauk wrote: maybe for 2010 when people had literally 6 months to get used to how the game behaved, but by mid 2011 they were mechanically fine
They really weren't
Marine splitting is an incredibly basic skill nowadays that was MIND-BLOWING MICRO when MKP was doing it back in the day
Players were sitting on 1/1 upgrades on both sides like 15 minutes into a match, banelings were crashing into marauders even though there was literally nothing else going on to occupy attention, etc.
Current top players make off-meta plays and still make it look impressive, players back then were just BAD
Remember Fruitdealer's GSL win? Because I do. He transfused a Muta on Metalopolis with a queen and we all went nuts, because that was unbelievable play at the time. He stuck a Nydus next to the production buildings of the Terran on Kulas Ravine or whatever it was with like 8 watchtowers in the middle and the Terran didn't notice. One of the oldschool worms that could be killed by workers in like 3 seconds. The caliber of play was really, really lackluster.
yes, in gsl open, 2010 when no one had played the game for longer than 6 months, people sucked. by mid-2011 they were basically the equivalent of pros today
I think we have to consider that new strategies and new metas enforce new challenges mechanic-wise. SC2 had to be figured out but the players always were under the pressure of still being able to perform. Experimenting could get you an edge but if you're onto a dead end or if you're not figuring out your new discovery well enough, you will lose against solid conservative play. Under those circumstances it was barely necessary to figure out new micro tricks. Kyrix' Banebusts had to become a superior strategy in order to force MKP to try out splitting with pure bio. Only then the benefits of having pure bio could be explored. Only since then it became an obligatory skill to split your Marines. Similar story with Inno's perfect paradepush-macro: it seemed more and more unstoppable until DRG figured out how to have a perfect balance of income, droning, ling/baneling and creep spread in order to deflect Innos push. Inno had to become seemingly overpowered to force a new way of micro/macro-mechanics to be found. Only DRGs success made it obligatory to adapt his style and deepen your skillset as a pro.
What I'm trying to say: As a pro it is only necessary to learn new skills, if the meta forces you to do so. Let's assume that MKP's Marinesplits were cool and all but just going for marauder/tank would've been much more effective. In this case it would've been dumb to adapt MKP's style instead of mastering bio/tank-play. This is also kind of why MKP looked so lost at some point: he tried so hard to bring his bio-micro to even more perfection that he lacked in other fields and therefore became less and less relevant over time. Maru looked similar at some point but he understood that he had to be more versatile in order to let his godly bio-micro come into play.
That's why in a new game skills are only learned step by step, even if the pure mechanical abilities of the players may be already there - they still have to learn how and when to use them in that new game.
I think you should look at the games slightly down the road instead. Those early games were laughed at even a year later.
The 2012 WCS happened at an awful time for balance and metagame (Protos Immo-Sentry vs Zerg BL Infestor, Terran was non existant) but the top players had those builds and timings pretty damn nailed.
The first year of SC2 was pretty rough but players developed quickly. While the meta was obviously completely different. Mvp's Macro was god tier in 2011.
On June 26 2018 08:16 VengefulTree wrote: I just watched Maru's first televised win and I'm honestly very confused by the level of play displayed. How is this even possible? It's not like these guys are playing RTS for the first time, they are actual pros who spent theirs days practicing the game!
Maru was 13 when he first played in GSL, I can guarantee you he wasn't a BW pro, and neither were many of the 2010/2011 players. Former semi-pro/practice partners maybe, others from the olden days and not in their prime, others never having been that notable etc.
The top tier BW pros only came into SC2 around 2012-2013.
On June 26 2018 08:16 VengefulTree wrote: I just watched Maru's first televised win and I'm honestly very confused by the level of play displayed. How is this even possible? It's not like these guys are playing RTS for the first time, they are actual pros who spent theirs days practicing the game!
Maru was 13 when he first played in GSL, I can guarantee you he wasn't a BW pro, and neither were many of the 2010/2011 players. Former semi-pro/practice partners maybe, others from the olden days and not in their prime, others never having been that notable etc.
The top tier BW pros only came into SC2 around 2012-2013.
Seems like noone has pointed out that they also made the game easier to play now.
At the start, there was no all-army key, no worker number indications on bases, no hotkey stealing mechanic, no rapid fire mechanic. I don't exactly remember just how customizable the hotkey layout was at the very start of WoL, but a lot of little things that really make a difference to overall gameplay were added later on in the game.
Defending in 3 different locations was much harder even as recent as hots, when you couldnt easily take away units from groups like you can now.
This of course is a small nuance, but it does help, especially players slightly below the top level.
Believe it or not, we improved a LOT since then. Also because this game was new. We simply needed differents skills than in bw. The gameplay wasn't exactly the same, so we had to improve on some things that didn't struck on our mind at that time. For example, creeps tumors. Back then, we weren't seeing a lot of creep tumors simply because we thought injects were far more important. And we couldn't afford to spend another 150 minerals for a queen. Another example to a lesser extent but still in correlation with the creep tumors are the banes. We didn't have the lurks, so we absolutely had to kill the marines with the banes and the chances to win those fights weren't high when you had to fight outside of creep, and that was even worse against a competent terran.
On June 26 2018 20:51 Liquid`Ret wrote: Seems like noone has pointed out that they also made the game easier to play now.
At the start, there was no all-army key, no worker number indications on bases, no hotkey stealing mechanic, no rapid fire mechanic. I don't exactly remember just how customizable the hotkey layout was at the very start of WoL, but a lot of little things that really make a difference to overall gameplay were added later on in the game.
Defending in 3 different locations was much harder even as recent as hots, when you couldnt easily take away units from groups like you can now.
This of course is a small nuance, but it does help, especially players slightly below the top level.
What is the hotkey to take away units from groups? I see pros doing it on stream but I don't know the hotkey and it's really frustrating as it's a really useful feature (especially now that all three races harass a lot)
It's pretty simple, players nowadays have the number of games or higher of that of the pros of that time, not to mention the amount of time watching SC2. I was Diamond when it was the highest league at release and now I'm Masters 2. I'm arguably not as good now compared to other players, than back then league wise, but I have obviously improved a ton since 8 years ago. LotV now is also a lot more execution based than back then where strategy played more of a role.
On June 26 2018 08:16 VengefulTree wrote: I just watched Maru's first televised win and I'm honestly very confused by the level of play displayed. How is this even possible? It's not like these guys are playing RTS for the first time, they are actual pros who spent theirs days practicing the game!
Maru was 13 when he first played in GSL, I can guarantee you he wasn't a BW pro, and neither were many of the 2010/2011 players. Former semi-pro/practice partners maybe, others from the olden days and not in their prime, others never having been that notable etc.
The top tier BW pros only came into SC2 around 2012-2013.
The competetive scene of any new sport or game is destined to look bad in retrospect, no matter the background of the participants.
No. OP basically said "how can these guys be so bad if they're pros?"
My point was that Maru wasn't a pro but an actual child, and many of the others were hardly pros either, only in the nascent SC2 but not in the same way that BW A-teamers like FantaSy, Stork, EffOrt, FBH etc. To expect people who weren't gods at BW (or hadn't been gods in 5+ years in the case of NaDa and BoxeR) to perform in SC2 after only 6 months of play at the same level as BW gods who had been top dogs for 3+ years and counting.... is silly. That was what I was trying to say.
My arm chair theorizing says improvement is inherently incremental, because that's just human nature. Most of the time, people are only capable of conceptualizing the minor improvement they need to make to beat the status quo. Thus, we build on such minor improvements, slowly inching the status quo forward. The revolutions and big leaps are few and far in between, even though they seem so obvious in hindsight.
Ofc this is just me talking out of my ass, but it seems plausible, doesn't it?
On June 26 2018 22:08 Waxangel wrote: My arm chair theorizing says improvement is inherently incremental, because that's just human nature. Most of the time, people are only capable of conceptualizing the minor improvement they need to make to beat the status quo. Thus, we build on such minor improvements, slowly inching the status quo forward. The revolutions and big leaps are few and far in between, even though they seem so obvious in hindsight.
Ofc this is just me talking out of my ass, but it seems plausible, doesn't it?
This + what Ret said + the guy that said that the meta was different so you only needed to adapt to the meta / state of the game + what everyone said globally
Being "bad" only mean anything relatively to someone else, because otherwise we are all bad in absolute terms since our minds are limited by game engine / hands being so slow. And in each era there were top players
On June 26 2018 14:21 ScrappyRabbit wrote: BitByBit was a GSL player. That's all I have to add to this discussion. I have no real dog in this fight, I just want us all to realize that this was a thing that happened.
Whenever I've watched videos of really really early pro matches from around summer of 2010 and earlier the play looked really basic, 1 base 3 marine 2 marauder 1 medivac pushes etc with no stim and low amount of micro and stuff like that just goes to show how new everyone was. It's cool to see how far the community & pros have come since then.
Also doesn't make sense to say that early SC2 players were bad when some of them stayed at the top for years, like MVP, MKP, Nestea or MC. MVP, MKP or MC were mechanical monsters, only supplanted on that front much later by the top players of today. Completely absurd to say that even today's Master players would have had a chance against those guys back then.
On June 26 2018 21:29 ejozl wrote: It's pretty simple, players nowadays have the number of games or higher of that of the pros of that time, not to mention the amount of time watching SC2. I was Diamond when it was the highest league at release and now I'm Masters 2. I'm arguably not as good now compared to other players, than back then league wise, but I have obviously improved a ton since 8 years ago. LotV now is also a lot more execution based than back then where strategy played more of a role.
honestly i dont think this is true. i was high masters in 2011, quit playing sc2 until lotv came out, was high masters in the first few months and quit again. i feel confident if i played about 400-500 games i would be masters 1 even though i haven't played sc2 in 3 years cause the skill level did not change much in the 4 years i didn't play
You know whats funny? This is the exact same conversation that occured a year after sc2 came out when referring to old meta builds about BW (think of the time of like grrrrrr). Know what the majority response was? "Everyone was just figuring out how to macro, most people didnt know what hotkeys were!"
Then fast forward to 2011 the consensus was "we're much more advanced and tech savy today compared to early bw days, the peak has been reached easily"
And now here we are again - nearly 10 years after sc2 released and we're talking about how the early sc2 pros were crap compared to today, and now a modern masters could've won early gsl. Idk, maybe its just human nature to look back and just naturally assume people in the past were idiots (we do the same thing to our ancestors). But the truth of it is, because of how the game played back then they were amazing at what they did - and if they were brought forward from 2011 to today, they would still be the same level they are now (well, except fruitdealer...)
There are things that 2010 players had to deal with that current players just have no idea about, like how SHIT the maps actually were (Steppes of War?), the fact you didnt have rebindable hotkeys, there were no vipers for anti air blobs, etc...
The major reason probably was that early Sc2 was extremely rush rewarding and actually playing a macro game required more knowledge in terms of builds, timings and mechanics.
So a lot of practice for the first few months was not spent on practicing later game mechanics.
Besides MVP and Julyzerg, it really wasn't the best BW players who transitioned early to Sc2. And even then, if you look at MVP's first Sc2 games in the GSL, he - on every aspect- looked by far the most advanced Sc2 player. His playstyle in late 2010 was a lot more similar to the playstyle all terrans used in mid/late 2011, then any other terran in the world.
On June 26 2018 21:11 Poopi wrote: What is the hotkey to take away units from groups? I see pros doing it on stream but I don't know the hotkey and it's really frustrating as it's a really useful feature (especially now that all three races harass a lot)
Alt + X (0-9) removes units from their old hotkey and puts them in a new control group X. If X already existed, X is overridden with the new units.
Alt + Shift + X (0-9) removes units from their old hotkey and adds them to a control group X. If X already existed, the selected units are added to the original units in control group X.
On June 27 2018 00:02 Jan1997 wrote: Whenever I've watched videos of really really early pro matches from around summer of 2010 and earlier the play looked really basic, 1 base 3 marine 2 marauder 1 medivac pushes etc with no stim and low amount of micro and stuff like that just goes to show how new everyone was. It's cool to see how far the community & pros have come since then.
I think a lot of it is due to the worker change, starting with more workers makes small pushes like this seems weak, when in the beta and early WOL some of these timings could be deadly. Later on players learned to defend a lot of the early aggression and transition to mid-game safely.
On June 27 2018 03:17 BamBam wrote: You know whats funny? This is the exact same conversation that occured a year after sc2 came out when referring to old meta builds about BW (think of the time of like grrrrrr). Know what the majority response was? "Everyone was just figuring out how to macro, most people didnt know what hotkeys were!"
Then fast forward to 2011 the consensus was "we're much more advanced and tech savy today compared to early bw days, the peak has been reached easily"
And now here we are again - nearly 10 years after sc2 released and we're talking about how the early sc2 pros were crap compared to today, and now a modern masters could've won early gsl. Idk, maybe its just human nature to look back and just naturally assume people in the past were idiots (we do the same thing to our ancestors). But the truth of it is, because of how the game played back then they were amazing at what they did - and if they were brought forward from 2011 to today, they would still be the same level they are now (well, except fruitdealer...)
There are things that 2010 players had to deal with that current players just have no idea about, like how SHIT the maps actually were (Steppes of War?), the fact you didnt have rebindable hotkeys, there were no vipers for anti air blobs, etc...
Agreed, as someone who played a lot in beta and early WOL, players were very precise and put a lot of work into their practice and builds, it's just that most of those old builds aren't viable anymore.
I remember a lot more games being decided by small groups of units in the early game. Rush distances were tiny and perfect micro was required for early engages to either win the game or avoid being killed.
Dont forget that returning player ( like mvp,squirtle,mma, forgg etc ) struggle a lot to play at a top tier level they were back then, for example mvp actually struggle to maintain low gm level in korean server. So in my opinion it's not fair to say that top tier player back then could compete with current level of pro who didnt stop playing for years.
On June 27 2018 03:59 Crozo64 wrote: Dont forget that returning player ( like mvp,squirtle,mma, forgg etc ) struggle a lot to play at a top tier level they were back then, for example mvp actually struggle to maintain low gm level in korean server. So in my opinion it's not fair to say that top tier player back then could compete with current level of pro who didnt stop playing for years.
Mvp struggles a lot because he has injuries that prevent him from playing fast without being in pain
Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
On June 26 2018 21:11 Poopi wrote: What is the hotkey to take away units from groups? I see pros doing it on stream but I don't know the hotkey and it's really frustrating as it's a really useful feature (especially now that all three races harass a lot)
Alt + X (0-9) removes units from their old hotkey and puts them in a new control group X. If X already existed, X is overridden with the new units.
Alt + Shift + X (0-9) removes units from their old hotkey and adds them to a control group X. If X already existed, the selected units are added to the original units in control group X.
Thank you very much!
By the way, is the thread serious or is it just bait/trolling?
You should not forget, that players today saw most strats at some points, while back then people had to think way more about what to do next. If you have to think about that all the time, you can't play as fast as you would if you already knew the response.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
I suppose it's debateable how far some of the current SC2 pros would have done in BW had they not switched. Stats, Innovation, and TY are all players who had some success in BW before switching. It's possible that they could have become great in BW, but we'll never know.
But the thing is, the idea that early SC2 wasn't as good because it had worse BW is not entirely accurate. There are some BW pros that did very well, but unlike what the infamous Elephant in the Room article predicted, the best BW pros like Flash, Jaedong, Jangbi, Stork, Fantasy, and others struggled to be the best in SC2. Yes, they won tournaments, and Jaedong got many silvers, but they struggled to win or do as well as they did in BW.
I do think the influx of BW pros helped in the sense that you had experienced gamers coming to SC2, but I think it's more because of the team house effect and Proleague.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
I suppose it's debateable how far some of the current SC2 pros would have done in BW had they not switched. Stats, Innovation, and TY are all players who had some success in BW before switching. It's possible that they could have become great in BW, but we'll never know.
But the thing is, the idea that early SC2 wasn't as good because it had worse BW is not entirely accurate. There are some BW pros that did very well, but unlike what the infamous Elephant in the Room article predicted, the best BW pros like Flash, Jaedong, Jangbi, Stork, Fantasy, and others struggled to be the best in SC2. Yes, they won tournaments, and Jaedong got many silvers, but they struggled to win or do as well as they did in BW.
I do think the influx of BW pros helped in the sense that you had experienced gamers coming to SC2, but I think it's more because of the team house effect and Proleague.
Stats Bogus and TY weren't there in 2011. And sure I'm not arguing that nobody from that time would have become great in Broodwar, I'm sure some would have, I'm just saying a lot of them decided to play SC2 because Broodwar wasn't doing it for them, either because they hadn't been noticed yet and would have after some time (Maru, TaeJa) or because they just weren't good enough (MarineKing, FruitDealer), or because they were on the decline (RainBOw, NesTea). It's mostly the B Team. In any B team there are people who will end up in the A Team later, but most of them are there for a good reason.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
I suppose it's debateable how far some of the current SC2 pros would have done in BW had they not switched. Stats, Innovation, and TY are all players who had some success in BW before switching. It's possible that they could have become great in BW, but we'll never know.
But the thing is, the idea that early SC2 wasn't as good because it had worse BW is not entirely accurate. There are some BW pros that did very well, but unlike what the infamous Elephant in the Room article predicted, the best BW pros like Flash, Jaedong, Jangbi, Stork, Fantasy, and others struggled to be the best in SC2. Yes, they won tournaments, and Jaedong got many silvers, but they struggled to win or do as well as they did in BW.
I do think the influx of BW pros helped in the sense that you had experienced gamers coming to SC2, but I think it's more because of the team house effect and Proleague.
Most of the non-BW players who ended up being good at SC2 weren't playing yet in 2010, except for Maru who had the excuse of being very young.
2010 was full of players like Ensnare who could have been stomped by any competent BW pro, not just Flash and Jaedong.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
I suppose it's debateable how far some of the current SC2 pros would have done in BW had they not switched. Stats, Innovation, and TY are all players who had some success in BW before switching. It's possible that they could have become great in BW, but we'll never know.
But the thing is, the idea that early SC2 wasn't as good because it had worse BW is not entirely accurate. There are some BW pros that did very well, but unlike what the infamous Elephant in the Room article predicted, the best BW pros like Flash, Jaedong, Jangbi, Stork, Fantasy, and others struggled to be the best in SC2. Yes, they won tournaments, and Jaedong got many silvers, but they struggled to win or do as well as they did in BW.
I do think the influx of BW pros helped in the sense that you had experienced gamers coming to SC2, but I think it's more because of the team house effect and Proleague.
Stats Bogus and TY weren't there in 2011. And sure I'm not arguing that nobody from that time would have become great in Broodwar, I'm sure some would have, I'm just saying a lot of them decided to play SC2 because Broodwar wasn't doing it for them, either because they hadn't been noticed yet and would have after some time (Maru, TaeJa) or because they just weren't good enough (MarineKing, FruitDealer), or because they were on the decline (RainBOw, NesTea). It's mostly the B Team. In any B team there are people who will end up in the A Team later, but most of them are there for a good reason.
But the quote I was responding to was the idea that the players were bad or worse because the better players of BW had yet to switch to SC2.
MMA, MVP, and MC all joined fairly early on into SC2, and they were quite good for a long time.
On June 27 2018 12:22 Durp wrote: Because you could 1 base all in.
This. The maps allowed for really stupid 1 base strategies that didn't require you to be great at macro becaused eco was super low.
The skill level gap between 2010 and say early 2012 was huge. But between 2012 and today it's mostly micro plays that improved. The macro is pretty much the same skill-wise, it's just the economy that's different.
On JuNe 27 2018 04:24 Psychobabas wrote: It's the maps.
You could be in your opponents base from your base in literally 5 seconds (example: Lost Temple close positions)
You cant expect much to come out of such scenarios.
I'M glad someone mentioned it. The big thing is everyone had to play either Cheese or Anti-Cheese. We'd be into the 2nd Code S season before the real late game metas even begun to take hold. Why? The First wave of Super big maps made for some nutty matches.
Though this thread has, also, rather hilariously brought back up the readon IdrA didn't like SC2: you couldn't just out-skill your opponent. Especially in early WoL, so much was just Rock-Paper-Scissors. Maps sizes & starting positioning took far too long to figure out. (Anyone Remember Close Positions on Metalopolis? Or Steppes of War?) The game emphasized only certain mechanics for a long time.
Beyond just basic mechanics, it's a matter of figuring out how much time to spend practicing specific ones. No one would practice BW Muta micro if it wasn't so important. MKP showed that Bio w/ Micro was viable against Zerg, which is what really changed matters. Once established, all of the pros spent the time putting the work in. That's what we really see as a game is "figured out".
On JuNe 27 2018 04:24 Psychobabas wrote: It's the maps.
You could be in your opponents base from your base in literally 5 seconds (example: Lost Temple close positions)
You cant expect much to come out of such scenarios.
I'M glad someone mentioned it. The big thing is everyone had to play either Cheese or Anti-Cheese. We'd be into the 2nd Code S season before the real late game metas even begun to take hold. Why? The First wave of Super big maps made for some nutty matches.
Though this thread has, also, rather hilariously brought back up the readon IdrA didn't like SC2: you couldn't just out-skill your opponent. Especially in early WoL, so much was just Rock-Paper-Scissors. Maps sizes & starting positioning took far too long to figure out. (Anyone Remember Close Positions on Metalopolis? Or Steppes of War?) The game emphasized only certain mechanics for a long time.
Beyond just basic mechanics, it's a matter of figuring out how much time to spend practicing specific ones. No one would practice BW Muta micro if it wasn't so important. MKP showed that Bio w/ Micro was viable against Zerg, which is what really changed matters. Once established, all of the pros spent the time putting the work in. That's what we really see as a game is "figured out".
I would also point out that when we started to get the bigger maps, and as balance changes started to change things up, we did end up with some longer matches in the WoL days that showed who the strongest players were of the era. Damn shame a lot of that time was spent in the broodlord/infestor meta that was so bloody boring to watch.
My two cents on the subject is nobody can be perfect at RTS. It has such a high skill ceiling that things will develop basically forever, as long as map pools don't remain stale in a given game. 10 years from now, high level pros will probably still make current pros look bad. Doesn't mean they are bad, though. They just lack 10 years of context and practice.
Just one of those paradoxes which low skilled players imagine to themselves: if I could get back to 2001 now, I would win OSL instead of Grrr.... If I could get back to 1997 now, I would win Ferrari instead of Thresh.
You can't. Deal with it and be happy, because another 100 MMR doesn't make you worse or better person.
it's because people who have played the game since early days have 8 years of muscle memory relating to almost any unit interaction that can happen in any stage of the game (except for units that were added in expansions obviously)
you can leave the game for 2 years and come back not knowing the meta or strategies but still crush people by macroing competently and using your muscle memory to micro effectively. for pro players this effect is even greater because they spend hours and hours out of every day practicing and discussing, so when they learn unit interactions they learn them intimately
pros in particular have so much game experience that they have an insane ability to read the game state and know when there are resources "missing" and how to identify cheeses and transitions without directly scouting anything. that kind of knowledge continues to develop over years
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
I haven't rewatched the match yet (maybe will sometime though lol), but I remember that match. I was a huge Cella fan back in the day. I do remember watching this game was very painful and that it was very sloppy on both sides. Maru was like 13 at the time so I can excuse him, and I remember as a spectator it felt a bit close until the ending when it was getting hopeless for Cella, though if I were to rewatch it now I might see something completely different.
Anyway I was watching Cella's stream a ton back in the day and helping him coach students and stuff and watching him play on ladder. He was definitely smart and good at the game, even if he wasn't GSL Code A level. He was Korean masters and high masters / GM on NA. IIRC that GSL match vs Maru was SUPER early, back when everyone sucked at the game. Even just a few months later the skill drastically improved.
I can't remember if I was watching Cella before his match vs Maru or if I only found out about him after. But either way, I can say thinking back on my memories of how he played on ladder, part of the reason why everyone looks so bad is because of the meta, like others said. Maps were terrible, races weren't balanced, there were all kinds of jank rushes and builds and other shit including bugs.
I do agree it is funny that pros were so bad back then, and how confusing it is. Like if you were anything decent at BW (like let's just say roughly you were even C level on ICCUP), you should be able to at least just do a simple MMM macro build right? Well not completely correct, again because of the imbalances and weird timings and rushes. '
But could a diamond player from today compete in GSL? Fuck yes, that is no exaggeration. If you took the mechanics and intuition and intelligence of a diamond player today, and let them brush up on their WoL BOs and get familiar with the maps for a couple hours, no doubt they would be able to compete and even beat GSL pros. This is especially with how much better diamond players in LotV are now, compared to back in HotS. Back in WoL/HotS, I was a mid master Terran and I was able to offrace as Protoss and go almost 50/50 vs low masters on ladder, and I could easy 2-gate or canon rush or do any amalgation of protoss cheese with sloppy timings and beat low masters players. You can't troll low masters players like that anymore, nor Diamond players, or at least not without a more solid plan and BO than the ones I improvised, or without being wayyy better than them.
High diamond in LotV feels like mid masters in HotS, at LEAST. I felt that even mid diamond could be around mid masters in HotS. A high diamond player of today could definitely have done better than Maru or Cella (that match was one of the worst level of skill displayed at the time IIRC), but also would have a good chance to beat the best players of the time. If you look at Fruitdealer vs HopeTorture/Rainbow, it's like... wtf? Terran was SO imbalanced and broken at the time, how could you possibly be stomped so hard vs Zerg which was really weak? All the maps were tiny and super Terran favored. Honestly Fruitdealer is a god, a miracle performer. It definitely wasn't easy for him but he pulled off (relatively) amazing play after amazing play to defeat a huge lineup of Terrans.
Imagine a player of diamond or even heck platinum level today, going back and doing: -111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
Anyway, it's partly because SC2 is so different from SC1, it has a different feel and mechanics, and wasn't balanced yet. And yes, pro players' macro did slip often back then, and many pros were shit if you were to rate them by their "mechanics" or macro. As you can see, many of the players who were in GSL back then, fell off hard and could no longer keep up with skill of the truly good players. And even many of GSL's best back then fell off hard (Tester for example was already falling off when GSL started) and retired. It's fun to discuss the reasons why they seemed to suck so hard, we won't know 100% for sure, but I think it's a mix of things lol.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
But could a diamond player from today compete in GSL? Fuck yes, that is no exaggeration.
This is not an exaggeration. It is plain dellusional.
If you took the mechanics and intuition and intelligence of a diamond player today, and let them brush up on their WoL BOs and get familiar with the maps for a couple hours, no doubt they would be able to compete and even beat GSL pros. This is especially with how much better diamond players in LotV are now, compared to back in HotS. Back in WoL/HotS, I was a mid master Terran and I was able to offrace as Protoss and go almost 50/50 vs low masters on ladder, and I could easy 2-gate or canon rush or do any amalgation of protoss cheese with sloppy timings and beat low masters players. You can't troll low masters players like that anymore, nor Diamond players, or at least not without a more solid plan and BO than the ones I improvised, or without being wayyy better than them.
When master league was first introduced, I switched from bw and wc3 and started playing sc2 and it took me 40 games to hit masters. After that it was like running against a brick wall trying to beat even mid-master players... When LotV went free to play I played some ladder and it took 80 games to reach master 3... and that's after 5 years of not playing any multiplayer RTS besides maybe 100 or so 3v3 games in sc2... Not only did I hit master but I was able to take games from players with 500 more mmr than me often enough... My mechanics are terrible and I basically don't know any build order after the 90 sec mark at best. I am certainly not better than I used to be 8 years ago and considering that I hit a wall back then, I feel very confident in saying that I would get smashed just as hard by even mediocre master players from the times of WoL now as I was back then.
Imagine a player of diamond or even heck platinum level today, going back and doing: -111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
A diamond player nowadays (just like back then) can not follow a build order if his life depended on it, never mind bring any acceptable level of multitasking to pull of even the most simple rushes in a decent manner.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
If you took the mechanics and intuition and intelligence of a diamond player today, and let them brush up on their WoL BOs and get familiar with the maps for a couple hours, no doubt they would be able to compete and even beat GSL pros. This is especially with how much better diamond players in LotV are now, compared to back in HotS. Back in WoL/HotS, I was a mid master Terran and I was able to offrace as Protoss and go almost 50/50 vs low masters on ladder, and I could easy 2-gate or canon rush or do any amalgation of protoss cheese with sloppy timings and beat low masters players. You can't troll low masters players like that anymore, nor Diamond players, or at least not without a more solid plan and BO than the ones I improvised, or without being wayyy better than them.
When master league was first introduced, I switched from bw and wc3 and started playing sc2 and it took me 40 games to hit masters. After that it was like running against a brick wall trying to beat even mid-master players... When LotV went free to play I played some ladder and it took 80 games to reach master 3... and that's after 5 years of not playing any multiplayer RTS besides maybe 100 or so 3v3 games in sc2... Not only did I hit master but I was able to take games from players with 500 more mmr than me often enough... My mechanics are terrible and I basically don't know any build order after the 90 sec mark at best. I am certainly not better than I used to be 8 years ago and considering that I hit a wall back then, I feel very confident in saying that I would get smashed just as hard by even mediocre master players from the times of WoL now as I was back then.
Imagine a player of diamond or even heck platinum level today, going back and doing: -111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
A diamond player nowadays (just like back then) can not follow a build order if his life depended on it, never mind bring any acceptable level of multitasking to pull of even the most simple rushes in a decent manner.
It sounds like you were gone for a majority of WoL and HotS?
You didn't really have to "follow" a build order for those builds, they were completely broken. The timings were very loose and you would still hit with something very powerful, especially the TvP 111 attack. The tvz bunker rush would end the game once the 2 bunkers start being built at the bottom. Killing the zerg straight up with marine/hellion/banshee, or just containing them with hellion banshee, was very easy to do as long as you didn't die to a roach all-in as the roaches marched across the map trying to survive the banshees shooting them down as they went across the map. I'll give you that going mech tvt would require a little more macro and mechanics, but mech was still incredibly powerful and no one knew. Knowledge is key.
I'm not saying a diamond player of back then competing with GSL players... I'm saying a diamond player of today, with knowledge of what was broken and what players did back then that was bad, could easily win. Look at Fruitdealer vs Rainbow, and look at how terrible whatever Rainbow is doing. It was an ugly mix of bio and mech, they didn't even know at the time that it was bad. He had so many different units and never used a single one of them well, he would have been better off stream lining his composition.
I do have a really hard time imagining you came back with almost literally no serious 1v1 practice, and hit masters. But maybe you are naturally very good at RTS, good for you. There are various reasons to explain why you could hit masters today though with little practice, but also believe that you wouldn't be able to beat WoL players of back then. It could be that you have good game sense for example and thus thrive in LotV's current meta (which is quite diverse and active even in the early game, and the game can go in many directions quickly that players may be unfamiliar with), but are weaker when it comes to following BOs or being knowledgeable about all the timings to defend against back then (which would obviously put you at a disadvantage in the WoL meta which was less macro-favored and had rushes and cheeses running rampant). There's such a thing as people being good at different things, not all diamond players are alike and not all masters players are alike.
I didn't play LotV until a month ago, so I don't know what the ladder was like back then, maybe it was different, but anyway... That doesn't mean that diamond players don't follow build orders with at least some decency though just because you were successful without following BOs. I for sure do follow BOs and I'm in high diamond right now. I did follow strict macro build orders back in WoL and HotS as well, even if my macro would fall apart more as the game went on. But I also could beat GM zergs with Mech in HotS since it was so powerful until they nerfed mass Ravens so you can't just sit home and defend all game. If I keep playing I could probably improve fast and get into masters soon (went 18-1 in the last 19 games on ladder), but right now I'm still learning the basic naunces of what certain compositions are good and bad in what situations, since I'm still really unfamiliar with the new units and race changes. My weakness is knowing the basic responses to early cheese and timings, and composition switches. This is especially true because I'm a mech player. My macro, mechanics, micro, and multitasking are pretty decent. We could easily be good and bad at different things.
Look at the games they played back then, their macro was often terrible outside of following short cheese builds, and they had no idea what they were doing. Their game sense was very different and lacking, and so many broken builds and strategies weren't known about until they came about. Someone from now going back in time would have an easy time. Maybe you wouldn't be able to, if you weren't playing or watching for a long time between WoL and LotV (not sure if you were or weren't watching SC2 over the years). But I do not see how someone going back with full knowledge of how the meta evolved and what builds were broken and why, would not be able to beat some GSL players. Maybe not stomp with 100% winrate, but with some preparation time for each GSL round, they could potentially get pretty far. There would not be enough time for the opponents to learn on the fly how to defend against those builds or strategies, especially because many of them required actual balance changes and players could not come up with any decent answer (basically all 4 things I listed earlier). Or drastic map pool changes (main ramps needing neutral lowered depots at the bottom to prevent bunker rushes, naturals no longer having huge cliffs to defend against, map size increasing by a ton, main base size reduction to nerf drops and hidden proxies, etc.)
I don't know how you can call me delusional, but whatever, it's your opinion, I can't convince you otherwise, this is my opinion from my experiences. I don't have any bias or reason to try to convince people that diamond players of today could beat GSL players of back then, it is simply something that is pretty clear to me to be very possible.
On June 26 2018 14:21 ScrappyRabbit wrote: BitByBit was a GSL player. That's all I have to add to this discussion. I have no real dog in this fight, I just want us all to realize that this was a thing that happened.
And his GSL victories are STILL the best GSL games ever
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
Even the BW B - teamers should be WAY beyond the skill of todays average master player so that doesn't seem like a sufficient reason. I think it's mostly the maps + imbalances which made the players look bad. You couldn't just spam your standard build order every game like today and were forced into unfamiliar situations much more often which made the players seem so unrefined.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
Even the BW B - teamers should be WAY beyond the skill of todays average master player so that doesn't seem like a sufficient reason. I think it's mostly the maps + imbalances which made the players look bad. You couldn't just spam your standard build order every game like today and were forced into unfamiliar situations much more often which made the players seem so unrefined.
Spot on. Nowadays players look good because LotV is multitask fest with almost braindead strategy behind it, the game put too much emphasis on mechanics
-111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
I can confirm this. I was top50 EU GM in 2011 just doing: -111 marine tank banshee vs Protoss (70%+ wins) -11/12 rax vs Zerg or the 4 marine + 1 hellion push followed by cloak banshee contain on 2 bases, followed by marine tank -cloak banshee or Polt's combat shield fast expand versus Terran (this was by far my weakest matchup but I constantly got beat by mech which proves your point)
I played like 4000 games in total in my career by mid 2011 when I quit, even won some money. Now that I tried playing LotV for around 500 games I can barely beat high level diamond players.
On June 27 2018 04:19 Nebuchad wrote: Early SC2 in Korea doesn't contain the best RTS players cause they were all playing Broodwar still. The people who tried their luck in SC2 at the start were the people who couldn't make it in Broodwar cause they didn't have enough skill.
That's not the whole story but it's a major chapter.
Even the BW B - teamers should be WAY beyond the skill of todays average master player so that doesn't seem like a sufficient reason.
It's not sufficient but it also shouldn't be understated, it's a major part of it. If you put Jaedong instead of Cella in that game, he may not know what he should be doing but it won't look as bad as this. And we say Jaedong cause that's the name we think of but we could say hyvaa or Modesty and it would still work.
Also note that Cella is not even the best example, as he has some kind of a career. There were people in these GSL like DAVIT and RenieHour. LiveForever made the fkin Ro4, and about half of the people who lost their Ro64 in Open Season 1 have only that line on Aligulac. In season 2 a journalist that was covering the event decided to play the qualifier for fun and qualified.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
But could a diamond player from today compete in GSL? Fuck yes, that is no exaggeration.
This is not an exaggeration. It is plain dellusional.
If you took the mechanics and intuition and intelligence of a diamond player today, and let them brush up on their WoL BOs and get familiar with the maps for a couple hours, no doubt they would be able to compete and even beat GSL pros. This is especially with how much better diamond players in LotV are now, compared to back in HotS. Back in WoL/HotS, I was a mid master Terran and I was able to offrace as Protoss and go almost 50/50 vs low masters on ladder, and I could easy 2-gate or canon rush or do any amalgation of protoss cheese with sloppy timings and beat low masters players. You can't troll low masters players like that anymore, nor Diamond players, or at least not without a more solid plan and BO than the ones I improvised, or without being wayyy better than them.
When master league was first introduced, I switched from bw and wc3 and started playing sc2 and it took me 40 games to hit masters. After that it was like running against a brick wall trying to beat even mid-master players... When LotV went free to play I played some ladder and it took 80 games to reach master 3... and that's after 5 years of not playing any multiplayer RTS besides maybe 100 or so 3v3 games in sc2... Not only did I hit master but I was able to take games from players with 500 more mmr than me often enough... My mechanics are terrible and I basically don't know any build order after the 90 sec mark at best. I am certainly not better than I used to be 8 years ago and considering that I hit a wall back then, I feel very confident in saying that I would get smashed just as hard by even mediocre master players from the times of WoL now as I was back then.
Imagine a player of diamond or even heck platinum level today, going back and doing: -111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
A diamond player nowadays (just like back then) can not follow a build order if his life depended on it, never mind bring any acceptable level of multitasking to pull of even the most simple rushes in a decent manner.
It sounds like you were gone for a majority of WoL and HotS?
I pretty much only played a notable amount of 1v1s during very early WoL and then again when I tried to hit master league in 2011. I don't even own HotS. However, I have been following and watching sc2 throughout its existence. You can find several NASL LR threads I made and updated. My liquipedia contributions are in a large part due to score updates of sc2 tournaments. While I did not play much sc2 I have been watching a ton.
You didn't really have to "follow" a build order for those builds, they were completely broken. The timings were very loose and you would still hit with something very powerful, especially the TvP 111 attack. The tvz bunker rush would end the game once the 2 bunkers start being built at the bottom. Killing the zerg straight up with marine/hellion/banshee, or just containing them with hellion banshee, was very easy to do as long as you didn't die to a roach all-in as the roaches marched across the map trying to survive the banshees shooting them down as they went across the map. I'll give you that going mech tvt would require a little more macro and mechanics, but mech was still incredibly powerful and no one knew. Knowledge is key.
I vividly remember the TvP 111 build and how Puma was crushing with it during NASL. I remember reading a ton of complaints about it. I also remember that despite of people learning about how ridiculously strong it was, PvT win rate was significantly above 0% and somehow strong protoss players were still consistently beating ladder hero terrans. So either the 111 was not as imba as you claim (personally I believe that this build was very high up on the bullshit scale) or execution did in fact matter. Knowledge alone does not help much when your mechanics are noticeably worse than those of your opponents. And knowledge alone is useless when your mechanics are plain atrocious as are those of diamond players and even a lot of master players nowadays. Throughout sc2 there have been a lot of really strong strategies that were later nerfed significantly and during every period the better players - even just a league or two above their opponents, never mind pro players - kept destroying the weaker players trying to abuse the advantage of those strategies, showing that the suggestion of knowledge of imbalance helping bad players to win against good ones (never mind pro players) is plain wrong.
I'm not saying a diamond player of back then competing with GSL players... I'm saying a diamond player of today, with knowledge of what was broken and what players did back then that was bad, could easily win. Look at Fruitdealer vs Rainbow, and look at how terrible whatever Rainbow is doing. It was an ugly mix of bio and mech, they didn't even know at the time that it was bad. He had so many different units and never used a single one of them well, he would have been better off stream lining his composition.
I understand very well what you are saying and it is still absolutely ridiculous. 1. Fruitdealer was only relevant in the beta and the first two GSL open season, which were Summer/Fall 2010. The Cella game shown in the thread is also from the first open season. All of those are just a few months after sc2's release (July 2010). It has already been established in this thread that players at the start of the game were mechanically lacking (no wonder after only 2-3 months of playing) and were facing issues with imbalance, unstable meta, no build orders, etc. Additionally, the preliminaries of the open seasons were set up in such a way that allowed some genuinely terrible players to reach GSL. However, the imba strategies you talk about came much later (e.g. 111 became a thing in the summer of 2011). At that point, build orders were fairly refined, top players had a year of practice behind them (+ team support) and were mechanically spot on. If you said that current high diamond players with the knowledge of today could do well in the first GSL open season if warped back in time, then there may be some merit to it. I still doubt that they would do well, but who knows, we would be talking about players with years of practice and knowledge advantage matching up against ones with a month of practice... Mechanical skill as well as strategies improved rapidly in early WoL. By mid-2011 the difference between pros and even middling GMs was night and day. Pros had teams, coaches, were practicing non-stop, and were playing for a living. Any notion that they were even remotely comparable in mechanics as some diamond player from today is absurd. 2. Actually, some diamond players in the past could very well compete with GSL players during the open season. Nobody was above diamond back then... Master league was only introduced after the 3 open season (Jan 2011)... 3. From a purely anecdotal point of view. I reached master with the same ease in 2018 as I did in 2011 and hit a wall the same way. Mechanically, I am probably even worse than I used to be (I switched races and I do not even know most hotkeys...). Diamond players simply have no ability to execute even a simple rush properly, never mind any bo that does not involve a proxy... They couldn't do it in 2011 and they can't do it now. Even a simple pressure with a few units on the back of a macro bo, delays their timing attack by a minute or two, and even kills them outright sometimes...
I do have a really hard time imagining you came back with almost literally no serious 1v1 practice, and hit masters. But maybe you are naturally very good at RTS, good for you. There are various reasons to explain why you could hit masters today though with little practice, but also believe that you wouldn't be able to beat WoL players of back then. It could be that you have good game sense for example and thus thrive in LotV's current meta (which is quite diverse and active even in the early game, and the game can go in many directions quickly that players may be unfamiliar with), but are weaker when it comes to following BOs or being knowledgeable about all the timings to defend against back then (which would obviously put you at a disadvantage in the WoL meta which was less macro-favored and had rushes and cheeses running rampant). There's such a thing as people being good at different things, not all diamond players are alike and not all masters players are alike.
Besides that, I only had a short stint of around 6 months of playing bw in the second half of 2013. I was just about able to compete in lowest levels tournaments organized on the forums here. All of those are documented in liquipedia.
1. Now you can choose to trust me that I needed around 40 games to hit master in 2011 or not, but as you can see I do not have many WoL games anyway. 2. The 2016 WoL master placement was only because I wanted to have the shiny icon. I only played the placement matches + 2-3 more games to get it. 3. I can't prove that it took me ~80 games in LotV to reach master but it really does not matter much considering that I only have 150 1v1s in LotV...
The majority of current diamond players cannot follow a build order if you put them in a sandbox games, and none of them can when the enemy puts even the slightest pressure on them. A single reaper harassing breaks their build order...
I didn't play LotV until a month ago, so I don't know what the ladder was like back then, maybe it was different, but anyway... That doesn't mean that diamond players don't follow build orders with at least some decency though just because you were successful without following BOs. I for sure do follow BOs and I'm in high diamond right now. I did follow strict macro build orders back in WoL and HotS as well, even if my macro would fall apart more as the game went on. But I also could beat GM zergs with Mech in HotS since it was so powerful until they nerfed mass Ravens so you can't just sit home and defend all game. If I keep playing I could probably improve fast and get into masters soon (went 18-1 in the last 19 games on ladder), but right now I'm still learning the basic naunces of what certain compositions are good and bad in what situations, since I'm still really unfamiliar with the new units and race changes. My weakness is knowing the basic responses to early cheese and timings, and composition switches. This is especially true because I'm a mech player. My macro, mechanics, micro, and multitasking are pretty decent. We could easily be good and bad at different things.
Players get worse after not playing for a long time. You missed years of LotV. Of course, you will not be able to get back to competing with GMs. Of course, different players have different strengths and weaknesses. The issue is that by mid-2011, pros were already the complete package. Just because some casual player would magically have inside knowledge of an imba strat does not mean that he would have any chance against a robot that has practiced the game for 8h/day for an year...
Look at the games they played back then, their macro was often terrible outside of following short cheese builds, and they had no idea what they were doing. Their game sense was very different and lacking, and so many broken builds and strategies weren't known about until they came about. Someone from now going back in time would have an easy time. Maybe you wouldn't be able to, if you weren't playing or watching for a long time between WoL and LotV (not sure if you were or weren't watching SC2 over the years). But I do not see how someone going back with full knowledge of how the meta evolved and what builds were broken and why, would not be able to beat some GSL players. Maybe not stomp with 100% winrate, but with some preparation time for each GSL round, they could potentially get pretty far. There would not be enough time for the opponents to learn on the fly how to defend against those builds or strategies, especially because many of them required actual balance changes and players could not come up with any decent answer (basically all 4 things I listed earlier). Or drastic map pool changes (main ramps needing neutral lowered depots at the bottom to prevent bunker rushes, naturals no longer having huge cliffs to defend against, map size increasing by a ton, main base size reduction to nerf drops and hidden proxies, etc.)
What is "back then"? You are giving me examples of games that were played less than 2 months upon sc2's release in a tournament environment when even terrible players could qualify for the GSL proper with some bracket luck in the preliminaries. At the same time, you give examples of imba strategies that came to be a year or so after sc2's release when Korean pros were coached and lived in a team environment with strict training regimen. At that time, pros had no issue to wipe the floor with decent ladder players trying to abuse those strategies. Why would they have any issues smashing current bad players if they were warped back in time is beyond me.
This whole threat makes no sense? The game just came out back then, the people that played GSL and won stuff were the best at that time. Ofc the meta evolves and people get better, its the same with almost every sport! If you think about it for a minute you can answer the question yourself...
On June 28 2018 23:47 gTank wrote: This whole threat makes no sense? The game just came out back then, the people that played GSL and won stuff were the best at that time. Ofc the meta evolves and people get better, its the same with almost every sport! If you think about it for a minute you can answer the question yourself...
Yeah but a lot of the players back then had already a lot of RTS experience and with the knowledge we have today it seems they SHOULD have been playing at a higher level back then.
-111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
I can confirm this. I was top50 EU GM in 2011 just doing: -111 marine tank banshee vs Protoss (70%+ wins) -11/12 rax vs Zerg or the 4 marine + 1 hellion push followed by cloak banshee contain on 2 bases, followed by marine tank -cloak banshee or Polt's combat shield fast expand versus Terran (this was by far my weakest matchup but I constantly got beat by mech which proves your point)
I played like 4000 games in total in my career by mid 2011 when I quit, even won some money. Now that I tried playing LotV for around 500 games I can barely beat high level diamond players.
Thing is sc2 requires time to properly digest the games you played. Chances are that your life in 2018 doesn't really allow you to improve as much as your life in 2011
On June 28 2018 10:12 ggrrg wrote: A diamond player nowadays (just like back then) can not follow a build order if his life depended on it, never mind bring any acceptable level of multitasking to pull of even the most simple rushes in a decent manner.
That seems unnecessarily harsh lol, I'm a diamond and while I can recognize my own mediocrity, I can follow a build without too much hassle.
Anyway, thanks for all the answers, I've learned a lot. Seems I didn't take into account the broken maps and the nature of the very early sc2 scene. However, the most interesting things I think I've seen in this thread are the accounts of meta progress as incremental, never making leaps but always trying simply to be a little bit better than what was present at a time.
Anyone who says current Diamonds are comparable to pros in WOL is a complete idiot. Anyone who says current master players are comparable to the level of WOL pros is a complete idiot.
Right now everyone below very-high masters is utter shit, myself included there on M2 (and M3 with my offrace with which i havent learnt a BO or most of the hotkeys yet). In a way, when the first season of SC2 GM was introduced, that set of GM players is better than the current set of GM players. You didnt have any chance of making the cut unless you were spamming games non stop. Right now there are lots of casual players, streamers etc in GM.
The level of competition back in early WOL was way higher than it is now, the player base was way bigger. The game was shit. The maps were shit, and consequently the meta was shit, and rewarded a lot of bad habits (And yes, the game hasnt been figured out, true, but that s a very small impact, most things were figured out on the respective patch). 4 gate was the go-to protoss build in all 3 match-ups for like a year and a half.
Maps were small and badly laid out, so training lots of things like late game macro and tech switches were counter-productive, you either needed to be very good at allining or holding allins, and kinda just take it from there. Or finding the one new build or comp that could net you some free wins for a week or two, i will concede there was some of that as well.
Yes, some of the games were bad, some people who made it very far in the tournaments were bad, cuz they found one allin or one composition that worked for them and they got to like code S ro 16 or ro 8. Some people who made it far in the first few big tournaments didnt have stage experience, so they choked and shown shit games. The competition was fierce, even before the Kespa pros started to switch, and from there on it was very fierce.
You seem to pinpoint an exact game where the zerg was late with the spire or just messed up in a number of ways. I could easily find you games right now from any tournament, where one pro makes total nub mistakes.
TLDR: just NO, WOL pros werent bad. The game was and the maps were a lot worse. Current diamond and plat is shit (and master).
Diamonds / Masters of today would probably win on most maps just because strategy is more important than mechanics in Starcraft 2.
That being said they still had the capacity to micro two groups of units at once and handle crisis (ling run-bys, harass of any kind, etc.) which low level players today don't have. Actually even high masters have terrible multitasking in NA. "Strong" players in Starcraft 2 are players who know the meta and what unit comp is the most OP nowadays. Back then it was more about throwing your opponent off his game. Now everyone get at least free 3 bases in 95%+ of their games.
On June 28 2018 10:12 ggrrg wrote: A diamond player nowadays (just like back then) can not follow a build order if his life depended on it, never mind bring any acceptable level of multitasking to pull of even the most simple rushes in a decent manner.
That seems unnecessarily harsh lol, I'm a diamond and while I can recognize my own mediocrity, I can follow a build without too much hassle.
To be fair, the difference I noticed between 2011 and 2018 is that nowadays the general player is more aware of what they have to do to win. The first few months of WoL were like the Wild West - you could get away with any shit you did. In mid-2011 the overall skill had greatly increases and while pros were mechanical monsters and utilized fine-tuned strategies, the normal sc2 player was mostly winging it. Even in low-/mid-master league many players were not using anything specific build orders, instead relying on better mechanics and/or superior decision making. When I played LotV I noticed that nearly all opponents were trying to adhere to a build order, often enough even 4-5 minutes into the game. Even the few gold and plat players I met were playing the first few minutes of the game following a specific build order both for macro games as well as timing attacks. Well, just because everybody tried to do a build order does not mean that they did it particularly well... Even the slightest pressure during the early game threw even low-master players off their build. I won a bunch of games right away by pressuring with 4 units while double expanding against a variety of theoretically safe openings from my opponents. Pressure was not even neccessarily required for all my opponents to mess up their build orders in one way or another...
You think that you are pulling of build orders without much hassle, but this cannot possibly be true. If you were actually able to do so, you should just learn a timing attack for each matchup and then cruise to low GM or at least high masters without much trouble.
When I was a lot in bw during late 2013, I practiced a ton and tried to emulate many build orders I saw from the top players. I remember learning a specific simple timing attack in PvZ and utilizing it with decent success in my games. I had written down the whole build order, memorized it and practiced against AI a few times before unleashing it in multiplayer games. While often successful, I was still losing some games even though I felt that I did everything pretty well, not perfect, but with no major mistakes. This made no sense to me since pros were destroying other pros with it while I was failing even against my weak opponents. So I compared a replay of what I felt was my best execution with the pro replays I had... Color me surprised when I noticed that the 5:30 push of the Korean bw pro hit only at 6:20 when I did it... and it hit with 4 less units... Never mind that I was reinforcing much slower during the push and made a gazillion macro mistakes as soon as my units reached the opponent.
This is the same thing happening to players in LotV currently - be they plat, dia, or masters. They know build orders, they try to follow them, and they keep executing them in a poor manner unaware of how impactful their compounding small mistakes are. You delay your first production building by a few seconds because you microed your scouting worker, you missed constant worker production for a tiny bit a few times, got 2-3 short supply blocks, built your T2 production building 10 sec later than you could have (and thats after already delaying the prerequisite), had small gaps between unit production rounds, etc. And 6 minutes into the game, you are already 1 minute behind on your build order both on eco and infrastructure with a whole production cycle missed. Additionally, diamond players are in general very inflexible responding to specific situations requiring a change in approach. They would continue (poorly) following their build order even after seeing that their opponent is about to get a big advatage due to their opening - be it not responding to strong timings, or just letting opponents get away with unsafe eco builds.
edit:
On June 29 2018 02:00 Geo.Rion wrote: Anyone who says current Diamonds are comparable to pros in WOL is a complete idiot. Anyone who says current master players are comparable to the level of WOL pros is a complete idiot.
Right now everyone below very-high masters is utter shit, myself included there on M2 (and M3 with my offrace with which i havent learnt a BO or most of the hotkeys yet). In a way, when the first season of SC2 GM was introduced, that set of GM players is better than the current set of GM players. You didnt have any chance of making the cut unless you were spamming games non stop. Right now there are lots of casual players, streamers etc in GM.
The level of competition back in early WOL was way higher than it is now, the player base was way bigger. The game was shit. The maps were shit, and consequently the meta was shit, and rewarded a lot of bad habits (And yes, the game hasnt been figured out, true, but that s a very small impact, most things were figured out on the respective patch). 4 gate was the go-to protoss build in all 3 match-ups for like a year and a half.
Maps were small and badly laid out, so training lots of things like late game macro and tech switches were counter-productive, you either needed to be very good at allining or holding allins, and kinda just take it from there. Or finding the one new build or comp that could net you some free wins for a week or two, i will concede there was some of that as well.
Yes, some of the games were bad, some people who made it very far in the tournaments were bad, cuz they found one allin or one composition that worked for them and they got to like code S ro 16 or ro 8. Some people who made it far in the first few big tournaments didnt have stage experience, so they choked and shown shit games. The competition was fierce, even before the Kespa pros started to switch, and from there on it was very fierce.
You seem to pinpoint an exact game where the zerg was late with the spire or just messed up in a number of ways. I could easily find you games right now from any tournament, where one pro makes total nub mistakes.
TLDR: just NO, WOL pros werent bad. The game was and the maps were a lot worse. Current diamond and plat is shit (and master).
I would not have phrased it this way, but I agree with all the sentiments to a large degree. The competition was indeed very fierce during everything that came after the open seasons. And certainly for everything beyond mid-2011 when pros had already benefited from several months of team house practice, coaching, and an enormous pool of very motivated players.
On June 29 2018 02:02 crbox wrote: Diamonds / Masters of today would probably win on most maps just because strategy is more important than mechanics in Starcraft 2.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
-111 marine tank banshee push vs Protoss (one of the most broken BOs ever before it got nerfed) -going mech in TvT back when people thought it wasn't viable but actually it was busted and got nerfed later (because Blue Flame was disgusting back then and mech terrans literally won early-mid game just with mass hellions vs Bio) -beating Zergs early game just by churning out 1 marine and 1 hellion at a time and kiting and killing all their Queens because they had 3.5 range, and following up with Banshees to contain them on 2 base if they didn't outright die while you took 3 bases and maxed out, etc. -doing 11/11 2 rax rush vs zerg and containing them with 2 bunkers at the bottom of their main ramp
I can confirm this. I was top50 EU GM in 2011 just doing: -111 marine tank banshee vs Protoss (70%+ wins) -11/12 rax vs Zerg or the 4 marine + 1 hellion push followed by cloak banshee contain on 2 bases, followed by marine tank -cloak banshee or Polt's combat shield fast expand versus Terran (this was by far my weakest matchup but I constantly got beat by mech which proves your point)
I played like 4000 games in total in my career by mid 2011 when I quit, even won some money. Now that I tried playing LotV for around 500 games I can barely beat high level diamond players.
Thing is sc2 requires time to properly digest the games you played. Chances are that your life in 2018 doesn't really allow you to improve as much as your life in 2011
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
it's very normal with new games. early wc3 games were terrible as well. metagame evolves slowly but steadily. it's the case in every competetive and complex game. smash bros. melee is another example. a rank ~100 player nowadays would easily 3-0 the #1 player from 10 years ago.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
I was a top 8 master player before GM existed. (Early - Mid WOL) (170-200 APM)
I couldn't split marines vs. banelings in the heat of battle (still can't very well). I relied on the zerg not realizing I was taking a advantageous position and pre splitting...
I couldn't target fire banelings while microing marines. (I did with seige tanks occasionally)
I didn't use army hotkeys (Though I could have 3 drops (Similar to QXC) going and manage the main army if I planned it out well. This was way way way before medivac boost was a thing) I did all of this with the minimap and boxing units.
I had no idea how to fight a protoss death ball. (mostly because I wasn't fast enough with unit hotkeys when I did use them) Most of the games I won at my peak vs. protoss were getting an economic advantage and hoping I could pull them apart or win a base race when the protoss took a 3rd or 4th base. I may have successfully won a battle using ghosts with EMP 5 times.
I never learned how to harass with a banshee. (Even when the 1-1-1 was the thing to do)
I had a horrible time dealing with any kind of baneling or roach all-in from zerg. Usually I just died. (I was using a 2 medivac 16 marine opening very similar to the current 2-1-1 most games.
What I could do.
I could macro on 4-5+ Bases. I scouted and I knew what to do with that information. I knew the branches of one build per match-up as well as anyone at the time. I always knew when my opponent was expanding. (Either with drops, a hidden scv, buildings etc) I could manage 2-3 drops and get something done with the main army while macroing and upgrading. I knew my opponents didn't really scout that much. I did everything in my power to try to see drops, hidden buildings, etc. It's not hard to make a marine ring around another terran's base. Or build depots on the map. Opponents just didn't do much. If you saw the one thing they were doing. It wasn't hard to stop it.
I definitely feel like the average skill across the board was much lower in WoL. You had players like TLO and Gumiho that could actually compete in tournaments as random. Heck, even I ranked in masters and today I feel like I'd be lucky to get diamond if I played ladder again with the same amount of effort. It's all about time spent practicing and getting a feel for all the wacky situations that can happen during any game. Remember when nobody knew wtf they were doing in a base trade scenario? Now it's a pretty commonplace event and everyone at least understands how to play it out.
As far as Pro's being worse... I think a lot of that has comes down to game design and time. The mechanics of many players were pretty good. They just spent half their games learning from losing to dumb stuff...
I think increasing the rush distances. Increasing the number of workers. The implementation of better early defenses. (better queen, mothership core, better spine/spore) Protected natural expansions etc.
Allowed those mechanics to come out. The early days were all about trying to not die to dumb stuff. That's why it looks so much worse.
The reactor hellion opening and then Stephano (Queen buff) did so much to change TvZ. Learning how to simcity and using forcefields changed the protoss match-ups... And then the mothership core did it again.
I really like the idea of people thinking i could compete in gsl if i had a time machine, but like if my only real edge is knowing and breaking the meta game, then i think we can basically agree sos would just never lose ever if thats all it took to win. And given that while hes reached the finals but hasnt won yet, i think its a bit of a stretch to say 2018 diamond players could win in 2010 gsl. of course knowledge isnt the only argument, but like its the only one that really makes sense, plenty of capable micro and macro given the nature of the maps. maybe a few make it in the round of 64 but like keep in mind artosis could be your opponent, so sure 2010 zerg artosis or cella or bit by bit, but round of 32 round 16, 2018 diamond players dead for sure.
People weren't that bad, I'd actually say that super crisp timings were much harder to pull off and important at 6 workers. Scouting something 15-30 seconds too late was often game ending.
Maps were incredibly broken in a lot of matchups - e.g. TvP on Metalopolis, Shakuras, and Antiga come to mind (still have a chuckle when they actually admitted that.)
Mechanics didn't heavily start coming into play until the maps were starting to get standardized, like daybreak. Then eventually the game evolved into infestor broodlord, 190+ army supply terrans (with more income than opponents), etc.
'Strategy' if you can call it that and the execution/response was paramount to the game. Scouting was difficult to impossible in a lot of situations, which left a lot of coin-flippy scenarios that drove a lot of the early players away.
Also a very important skill of pros is to be able to figure out what your opponent is doing and adapt to it. This is why a 2018 diamond player could probably take some maps in 2010 GSL but he still would be demolished by the better players because they would find a way to react to his strategies. Also a 2018 diamond player would have to pull stuff off with a limited amount of units and unit-abilities and less workers to begin with... he probably wouldn't stand a chance in early game.
Time It takes time to develop skill. A person that has practiced for 4000 hours is typically not as good as someone that has practiced for 12000 hours. People back in 2011 had not practiced enough yet to become good.
Competition Since your opponents were worse back then it was harder to learn from them. Now your opponents are better which mean you have better examples to learn from.
I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
Beliefs are nice, but you are dead-wrong. You re comparing a build from LOTV to a build in WOL.That s like saying "Zergs now are so good, they can go 18h/17g/17p and not die to rushes, while those IDIOTS in WOL died to all kinds of rushes with 12/13 hatch openers all the time. God, zergs learnt so much!"
If you would throw Serral back into 2011 (and give some time for acclimatization), he would be the most skilled player, for sure, yet he would not win more than 1 out 4 events, cuz he would die to the bullshit maps and broken all-ins that ruined this game.
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
You re comparing a build from LOTV to a build in WOL.That s like saying "Zergs now are so good, they can go 18h/17g/17p and not die to rushes, while those IDIOTS in WOL died to all kinds of rushes with 12/13 hatch openers all the time. God, zergs learnt so much!"
I am not comparing builds. I am talking about only one build, the 7Gate robo during WoL era. This build could have been a lot deadlier if protoss players were microing as well as in 2018. I gave one example but I am sure we can find many strategies that would have been irrelevant or completly broken in todays standards of micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
You can't really compare builds because there have been many changes in the game that make some builds or units irrelevant. But you can compare micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
I guess most people refuse to see how bad players were years ago compared to now because it could diminish the accomplishement of their hero. (Seriously look at Nestea games, his games look terrible despite the fact that he was the best years ago)
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
You re comparing a build from LOTV to a build in WOL.That s like saying "Zergs now are so good, they can go 18h/17g/17p and not die to rushes, while those IDIOTS in WOL died to all kinds of rushes with 12/13 hatch openers all the time. God, zergs learnt so much!"
I am not comparing builds. I am talking about only one build, the 7Gate robo during WoL era. This build could have been a lot deadlier if protoss players were microing as well as in 2018. I gave one example but I am sure we can find many strategies that would have been irrelevant or completly broken in todays standards of micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
You can't really compare builds because there have been many changes in the game that make some builds or units irrelevant. But you can compare micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
I guess most people refuse to see how bad players were years ago compared to now because it could diminish the accomplishement of their hero. (Seriously look at Nestea games, his games look terrible despite the fact that he was the best years ago)
Looking at top GSL games from the first couple of seasons is bad, for sure. At the highest tier of competition, the current pros are way better than the early WOL pros, nobody is arguing that. Plus lots of trash players winded up in the final rounds due to the balance issues and the randomness of it. However ladder was about three times more competitive in WOL than it is now. Saying that any GM now could beat anyone going back is stupid. Going further and saying current diamond is comparable to early day pros is flat out insane. The ladder now is so easy it s ridiculous. I know from my own personal experience how the competition/ladder was back in WOL and what it is now. How much you needed to train and focus back and now.
Right now (quit in WOL, came back with F2P), after 2 surgeries on my wrist, and having a full time job, playing a couple hours a week at most, usually after a beer or two, im in Master2 with my main, +made it to masters 3 with my offrace (i dont have a single BO, i dont know many hotkeys).
In WOL, i played a tone, I focused very hard, played only 1 race, I had several buildorders written down and practiced them sometimes just vs AI to learn it better, I had practice partners etc. And i wasnt GM, just high masters.
So please, cut the shit, the current ladder is easy mode, yes the highest level of competitors have come a long way, but that does not mean current Diamond players could win LANs if they went back in time. They would lose 100% of their games to refined and much-practiced allins on shitty maps, and would lose all "macro" games as well to the early WOL pros.
On June 28 2018 23:47 gTank wrote: This whole threat makes no sense? The game just came out back then, the people that played GSL and won stuff were the best at that time. Ofc the meta evolves and people get better, its the same with almost every sport! If you think about it for a minute you can answer the question yourself...
Yeah but a lot of the players back then had already a lot of RTS experience and with the knowledge we have today it seems they SHOULD have been playing at a higher level back then.
which is why all the players with previous rts experience were standing at the top, doesn't mean they should figure out everything in a new rts within the first few weeks
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
You re comparing a build from LOTV to a build in WOL.That s like saying "Zergs now are so good, they can go 18h/17g/17p and not die to rushes, while those IDIOTS in WOL died to all kinds of rushes with 12/13 hatch openers all the time. God, zergs learnt so much!"
I am not comparing builds. I am talking about only one build, the 7Gate robo during WoL era. This build could have been a lot deadlier if protoss players were microing as well as in 2018. I gave one example but I am sure we can find many strategies that would have been irrelevant or completly broken in todays standards of micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
You can't really compare builds because there have been many changes in the game that make some builds or units irrelevant. But you can compare micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
I guess most people refuse to see how bad players were years ago compared to now because it could diminish the accomplishement of their hero. (Seriously look at Nestea games, his games look terrible despite the fact that he was the best years ago)
Looking at top GSL games from the first couple of seasons is bad, for sure. At the highest tier of competition, the current pros are way better than the early WOL pros, nobody is arguing that. Plus lots of trash players winded up in the final rounds due to the balance issues and the randomness of it. However ladder was about three times more competitive in WOL than it is now. Saying that any GM now could beat anyone going back is stupid. Going further and saying current diamond is comparable to early day pros is flat out insane. The ladder now is so easy it s ridiculous. I know from my own personal experience how the competition/ladder was back in WOL and what it is now. How much you needed to train and focus back and now.
Right now (quit in WOL, came back with F2P), after 2 surgeries on my wrist, and having a full time job, playing a couple hours a week at most, usually after a beer or two, im in Master2 with my main, +made it to masters 3 with my offrace (i dont have a single BO, i dont know many hotkeys).
In WOL, i played a tone, I focused very hard, played only 1 race, I had several buildorders written down and practiced them sometimes just vs AI to learn it better, I had practice partners etc. And i wasnt GM, just high masters.
So please, cut the shit, the current ladder is easy mode, yes the highest level of competitors have come a long way, but that does not mean current Diamond players could win LANs if they went back in time. They would lose 100% of their games to refined and much-practiced allins on shitty maps, and would lose all "macro" games as well to the early WOL pros.
So... you're lower on ladder than you were in WoL and because at your lower rank it's easier to win than when you were higher ranked the ladder is less competitive? Logic? Maybe you should get to your old rank first before you can make comparisons.
Right now everyone below very-high masters is utter shit, myself included there on M2 (and M3 with my offrace with which i havent learnt a BO or most of the hotkeys yet). In a way, when the first season of SC2 GM was introduced, that set of GM players is better than the current set of GM players. You didnt have any chance of making the cut unless you were spamming games non stop. Right now there are lots of casual players, streamers etc in GM.
But u missed something, right now, since f2p the low master ( master3/2 ) is really a lot easier than it was before f2p, with the large amount of new players the top 5% required is much easier to get. Like charoisaur said, try to get to high master again ( and high master is not master1 btw, master 1 is really far below the true high master level, it's like 600/700 mmr difference between low master1 and top master1/lowgm for EU ).
On June 29 2018 09:07 HungrySC2 wrote: Some background to the time period...
I was a top 8 master player before GM existed. (Early - Mid WOL) (170-200 APM)
i assume you don't mean top 8 as in serverwide, one of the 8 players on na or eu with the highest mmr? because being top 8 in your division is completely worthless, all the divisions were filled based on when you played and good players played right away and got placed into a division with all the other good players. rank 90 in a division like that is better than rank 1 in a division filled at the end of the season. it doesn't mean anything at all, you need to look at your overall server ranking based on mmr
On June 29 2018 09:07 HungrySC2 wrote: Some background to the time period...
I was a top 8 master player before GM existed. (Early - Mid WOL) (170-200 APM)
i assume you don't mean top 8 as in serverwide, one of the 8 players on na or eu with the highest mmr? because being top 8 in your division is completely worthless, all the divisions were filled based on when you played and good players played right away and got placed into a division with all the other good players. rank 90 in a division like that is better than rank 1 in a division filled at the end of the season. it doesn't mean anything at all, you need to look at your overall server ranking based on mmr
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
You re comparing a build from LOTV to a build in WOL.That s like saying "Zergs now are so good, they can go 18h/17g/17p and not die to rushes, while those IDIOTS in WOL died to all kinds of rushes with 12/13 hatch openers all the time. God, zergs learnt so much!"
I am not comparing builds. I am talking about only one build, the 7Gate robo during WoL era. This build could have been a lot deadlier if protoss players were microing as well as in 2018. I gave one example but I am sure we can find many strategies that would have been irrelevant or completly broken in todays standards of micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
You can't really compare builds because there have been many changes in the game that make some builds or units irrelevant. But you can compare micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
I guess most people refuse to see how bad players were years ago compared to now because it could diminish the accomplishement of their hero. (Seriously look at Nestea games, his games look terrible despite the fact that he was the best years ago)
Looking at top GSL games from the first couple of seasons is bad, for sure. At the highest tier of competition, the current pros are way better than the early WOL pros, nobody is arguing that. Plus lots of trash players winded up in the final rounds due to the balance issues and the randomness of it. However ladder was about three times more competitive in WOL than it is now. Saying that any GM now could beat anyone going back is stupid. Going further and saying current diamond is comparable to early day pros is flat out insane. The ladder now is so easy it s ridiculous. I know from my own personal experience how the competition/ladder was back in WOL and what it is now. How much you needed to train and focus back and now.
Right now (quit in WOL, came back with F2P), after 2 surgeries on my wrist, and having a full time job, playing a couple hours a week at most, usually after a beer or two, im in Master2 with my main, +made it to masters 3 with my offrace (i dont have a single BO, i dont know many hotkeys).
In WOL, i played a tone, I focused very hard, played only 1 race, I had several buildorders written down and practiced them sometimes just vs AI to learn it better, I had practice partners etc. And i wasnt GM, just high masters.
So please, cut the shit, the current ladder is easy mode, yes the highest level of competitors have come a long way, but that does not mean current Diamond players could win LANs if they went back in time. They would lose 100% of their games to refined and much-practiced allins on shitty maps, and would lose all "macro" games as well to the early WOL pros.
So... you're lower on ladder than you were in WoL and because at your lower rank it's easier to win than when you were higher ranked the ladder is less competitive? Logic? Maybe you should get to your old rank first before you can make comparisons.
I skipped several year, im barely playing, casually when i do, im through 2 surgeries and im a bit lower where i was in WOL when going super tryhard. Have another run at it, "logic".
I skipped several year, im barely playing, casually when i do, im through 2 surgeries and im a bit lowere where i was in WOL when going super tryhard. Have another run at it, "logic".
But the league repartition has changed, u dont know that it seems. read my post before too. it's meaningless to compare old rank ( master diamond gold etc ) with the rank now since they changed everything about the repartition with lotv.
I skipped several year, im barely playing, casually when i do, im through 2 surgeries and im a bit lowere where i was in WOL when going super tryhard. Have another run at it, "logic".
But the league repartition has changed, u dont know that it seems. read my post before too.
That hardly changes my point, that people claiming today's diamonds are at the level of WOL's pros are full of shit
That hardly changes my point, that people claiming today's diamonds are at the level of WOL's pros are full of shit.
Yes i agree with that tho. But like firecake said, gm now ( not low gm NA ) i think could win these old WOL tournaments ( with the right build order/meta of course ).
On June 29 2018 09:07 HungrySC2 wrote: Some background to the time period...
I was a top 8 master player before GM existed. (Early - Mid WOL) (170-200 APM)
i assume you don't mean top 8 as in serverwide, one of the 8 players on na or eu with the highest mmr? because being top 8 in your division is completely worthless, all the divisions were filled based on when you played and good players played right away and got placed into a division with all the other good players. rank 90 in a division like that is better than rank 1 in a division filled at the end of the season. it doesn't mean anything at all, you need to look at your overall server ranking based on mmr
True, but the mmr wasnt showed back then.
your points were your mmr with a weird offset. comparing by points was good enough. masters league didnt have division offsets like diamond and below did
You had different meta. First the amount of workers you have at the beginning really change all the builds.
Then, the maps were so close that all you could watch back then was all ins, macro game was not developed and Blizzard had to nerf A LOT of stuff to make macro viable.
In that time was allin vs allin, that is why they don't blind exp, because back then with 4 gates, barracks before supply, etc, you coudn't just expand and macro. Also, the pool was full of small maps. Rush distances + diferent timings for building made fast exp a suicide.
1 base meta is not because they were bad, it was because that was what worked back then, in that patch, so you are doing a bad comparison.... Mkp had a top notch micro.
I sugest to go reading the patches, then go reading the map pool and learn how much stuff had to be changed to make macro viable.
On June 29 2018 09:29 Kitai wrote: I definitely feel like the average skill across the board was much lower in WoL. You had players like TLO and Gumiho that could actually compete in tournaments as random. Heck, even I ranked in masters and today I feel like I'd be lucky to get diamond if I played ladder again with the same amount of effort. It's all about time spent practicing and getting a feel for all the wacky situations that can happen during any game. Remember when nobody knew wtf they were doing in a base trade scenario? Now it's a pretty commonplace event and everyone at least understands how to play it out.
Gumiho qualified as random in the 1st open season, which started 1 month after the release of sc2... TLO practiced and played only terran when he qualified for GSL. TLO was random during the beta and something like the first 2 weeks of WoL. HotS was launched 2.5 years after the release of WoL, so saying that WoL players were "bad" because somebody did something 1 month after the release of the game omits over 95% of the competetive existence of the game. If the entirety of the sc2 ladder was harder or easier during WoL is besides the point since op specifically talks about pros being bad. How about we look at the fact that by early 2011 (half a year after WoL was launched) there were a bunch of sponsored teams with players living, practicing, and being coached in team houses? In the last year of WoL's existence with KESPA's teams completely switching over to sc2 there was the largest amount of Korean teams and team houses out of the entirety of sc2. The end of WoL into the beginning of HotS was the time with the largest professional training environment in sc2...
On June 29 2018 10:01 Snakestyle1 wrote: They had less games played, less experience, less practice, and no players to learn from and copy..
Why is someone with only 400 life time games played still in gold or platinum or whatever league theyre in? Because they didnt play enough games yet.
Same goes for early sc2 pros.
Sure that's an argument for the very beginning of WoL, but after a year pros had already accumulated thousands upon thousands of practice games. Quantity is certainly not the most crucial part of practice anyway. Quality and intesity yield greater results. Some bike enthusiast who has been riding to school/work for 20 years will certainly not be able to perform even remotely as well as some teen aspiring to participate in the tour de france. Some guy that has been playing tennis for fun for decades will be completely outclassed by some teen dedicating its life to turn pro soon. BW fans who have tens of thousands of online games by now are hardly comparable to 16yo Flash winning the biggest bw tournament 10 years ago... For the better part of WoL pro team and practice infrastructure was absolutely top-notch.
On June 29 2018 11:49 PuddleZerg wrote: They just didn't know better.
Remember in Brood War when Nada microed for the first time? Amazing right? No, but it was at the time.
Like how the wheel was once a huge discovery or fire.
Nada had excellent micro, but he was most renowned for his brutal macro, which was setting him apart from the competition. Boxer and even iloveoov relied to a much greater degree on superior micro than Nada.
On June 29 2018 12:41 Agh wrote: People weren't that bad, I'd actually say that super crisp timings were much harder to pull off and important at 6 workers. Scouting something 15-30 seconds too late was often game ending.
Maps were incredibly broken in a lot of matchups - e.g. TvP on Metalopolis, Shakuras, and Antiga come to mind (still have a chuckle when they actually admitted that.)
Mechanics didn't heavily start coming into play until the maps were starting to get standardized, like daybreak. Then eventually the game evolved into infestor broodlord, 190+ army supply terrans (with more income than opponents), etc.
'Strategy' if you can call it that and the execution/response was paramount to the game. Scouting was difficult to impossible in a lot of situations, which left a lot of coin-flippy scenarios that drove a lot of the early players away.
I completely forgot how absurd WoL was in terms of scouting. People had to basically play blindly for several minutes... Good luck scouting with protoss without adepts and oracle, and with halucination needing 100/100 80sec research... The other races weren't much better off either.
On June 29 2018 17:04 MockHamill wrote: Time It takes time to develop skill. A person that has practiced for 4000 hours is typically not as good as someone that has practiced for 12000 hours. People back in 2011 had not practiced enough yet to become good.
Competition Since your opponents were worse back then it was harder to learn from them. Now your opponents are better which mean you have better examples to learn from.
Time: see 3 answers above Competition: see the first answer
On June 29 2018 19:29 FireCake wrote: I remember having this conversation at the beginning of HoTS. If protoss players were at least half good as they are are right now, 7G robo would have never allow any zerg to survive more than 10 min against protoss in WoL. Just look at the prism micro...
Bold claim. And more importantly completely unfounded and 100% subjective. Also, not sure why you are talking about the warp prism. How much was the pickup range of the prism increased in LotV? 300%? Which would be 900% increase of the pickup are around the prism... Or was the range increase actually even higher? Let's not forget that the warp prism had slower accelaration and slower max speed for the entirety of WoL. And on top of that for the first half of WoL it had significantly less overall health than now.
I believe almost any GM in 2018 could win all tournaments in 2010-2012
2010 - maybe. 2012 - absolutely not. Thinking that some casual middle level GM would have any advantage - be it mechanically or strategically - over the plethora of pros benefiting from 1-2 years of Korean team house practice is absurd.
Nowadays people know how to macro on 5 bases, handle 3 attacks in the same time, micro much better and more importantly, people know way better how to deviate from a build order to another. People know how to adapt after some weirds attacks were both players lose workers buildings and tech and it is difficult to know who is ahead or not.
WoL was a completely different game from LotV. The slow economy, the inability to scout reliably, the weird maps, the effectiveness of alls, etc. etc. did rarely allow for a player to reach 5 bases or more than 3 for that matter. The rest of your statements are purely speculative
But you can compare micro/macro/multitasking/decision-making...
Snute just delivered a prime example of the impeccable micro and decision-making of current players by losing a bo3 against a cannon-rushing uthermal... Mutlitasking was a skill that saw much less exposure in WoL due to the game's slow economy, lack of harassment options and the prevalence of all-ins among other things.
Your eyes,memmory and brain are all adjusting to the game which is different for everyone. It takes time till certain pattern are see and then can be understood. New games creates a completely new experience which can take people time to understand and then playout due to how difficult the game is to play.
Rts is only as simple as you make it on one hand you can easly learn point and click with your mouse and really on hand,mussle memmory to execute moves. But once that done you need to keep practiceing to create and built up your skill sets. Your either going to be strong micro,macro or have good stratergies ect or all the above means your gosu.
Sc2 or rts in general is not as simple as you make it a player can play one extrodinary game and tample a pro gamer .The chances or that are slim but is always a possibility. The reasoning behind sc2 players being so bad when or at early realease. Basicly they were all new to the game. For example saviour was testing the early sc2 game before release he was adjusting his game from sc1 and then adjusting to the new screen and complete different gameplay. Which can explain why some players performed good at that time period compare to others some people learn the game better then others and performed better.
To be honest I think everyone is just bandwagon on people where "bad" back then without much critical thought or analysis. If I was to read the comments it almost sounds like people today are just orders of magnitude better then back in the early days of WoL. Its like comparing Batman to Superman.
The thing is, if you actually took the time and analyzed the APM, EPM and potentially the Screens Per Minute of players today I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find that they are all that different from the peak of people in WoL.
Yes of course people in 2010 and throughout 2011 were terrible, but it stemmed like 50% from strategies, 40% from the map pool and maybe like 10% from mechanics alone.
Early WoL had a terrible map pool, where people had like 20 seconds time to react because of the ridiculous rush distances. The open nats made getting a 2 base eco a real challenge and a 3 base eco was like a pipe dream.
This all bread a certain type of skill sets where perfectly executing your rush was make or break because the game could be decided 80% right then and there. Macro was irrelevant as you wouldn't even get there.
The players adapted with the time and, once the map pool actually got good we saw players shine in all their true macro and multi-tasking glory.
Unlike something fictional, like, say Dragonball Z, players actually have a real physical limit to how much they can tangibly improve. Your APM and EPM cap out at around like 400 and 200 with maybe only the best players ever able to sustain 450 and peak at 500 for short bursts. The average human reaction speed to visual stimuli is at 0.25 seconds, maybe a pro gamer could reduce it to 0.2. There is only so much room to cut corners and optimize a build. Once you get to that peak of mechanics pros need to improve in other areas such as decision making, both in game and in series.
Decision making itself also has its limits as the human mind can also suffer from this thing also known as information overload. If you bombard someone with so much information like say, the need to micro, macro and multi-task in several places at once for a prolonged period of time that certain someone will inevitably make mistakes. They will enter a state there they are consciously responding to so many stimuli that they can barely think critically any more, much less devise and execute a game plan. And hell if even paid Aircraft Pilots can fall prey to something like this I doubt pro gamers can build up any kind of tolerance to it. Hence why decision, even though it can be trained, still has real human limits.
It might very well be the case that today's players are overall better than they were in 2011/2012, but when I hear someone saying that players today are overwhelmingly better than those back then, well then I need to stop and take that information with a fist sized pinch of salt.
@ Destructicon Don't forget on broken tactics. 4-gate on higher ground? No ramp 4gate? (yes, we had such maps)
But anyway, it's 8 years of difference. Sure, you can say that nowadays if you move players back, they would probably win. Boohoo. If you match a pro with 8 year of research behind him with a "pro" who has 5 months of beta behind him(not a stable beta), it's not a fair play. But thinking those pros would just suck nowadays, because you would "move" them and skip those fking 8 years the others have is as stupid as the original idea. Look at Life, he had to shoot himself in the knee. Mvp would be probably still dominating if he had the health to back it up. Parting is getting goot again - god damn PARTING! He's one of the old players ;-)
If you would give the old players the time the current players have and the research the old guard did for the new players, they would be similarly good. Comparing a time difference where most of the top players had the time to train more, to research more and to use the old "bad" players as a knowledge resource is ... not nice...
On June 26 2018 10:37 K3Nyy wrote: Strategies were undiscovered so players looked worse, but I guarantee you that their mechanics and game sense were still way above the average Master level player today.
2010/2011 SjoW could bury any 2018 NA and EU Masters player. He is my favourite non-Korean of all time. Innovative out-of-the-box thinker... super nice guy... great class act... and a scarey killer instinct.
why were basketball players so bad at the game in 1905?
There was a time not too long ago where the basic "jump shot" was considered "fundamentally unsound" by many basketball experts. Also , the ABA's 3 point line was laughed at by the NBA. Its funny tracking the history of new things as they begin as "heresy" and end up as "obvious".
On June 26 2018 10:37 K3Nyy wrote: Strategies were undiscovered so players looked worse, but I guarantee you that their mechanics and game sense were still way above the average Master level player today.
2010/2011 SjoW could bury any 2018 NA and EU Masters player. He is my favourite non-Korean of all time. Innovative out-of-the-box thinker... super nice guy... great class act... and a scarey killer instinct.
I like when he beat Life
its nice to see him on TL's Hearthstone team. I think he strengthens the TL brand.
pretty presentist assertion op. season 1 of gsl was hilarious. it wasn't even in sync with what people thought was ideal; it was mainly execution of stupid builds on even worse maps. i don't think anyone was proud of their performances in those days looking back. maybe bitbybitprime.
I'm sure that if I went back to 2010 with my current form, I can easily grab the first couple of GSLs easy considering I know how things will develop and can abuse this. Level of play was low at the time, despite some of the players having previous RTS experience. It'll be like a diamond in WoL playing a silver player haha.
On July 03 2018 10:58 BigFan wrote: I'm sure that if I went back to 2010 with my current form, I can easily grab the first couple of GSLs easy considering I know how things will develop and can abuse this. Level of play was low at the time, despite some of the players having previous RTS experience. It'll be like a diamond in WoL playing a silver player haha.
GSL season 1 MAYBE. But after that I am not so sure. No amount of experience will help you when MKP 2 rax you on close spawn LT or Metalopolis.
On July 03 2018 10:58 BigFan wrote: I'm sure that if I went back to 2010 with my current form, I can easily grab the first couple of GSLs easy considering I know how things will develop and can abuse this. Level of play was low at the time, despite some of the players having previous RTS experience. It'll be like a diamond in WoL playing a silver player haha.
GSL season 1 MAYBE. But after that I am not so sure. No amount of experience will help you when MKP 2 rax you on close spawn LT or Metalopolis.
that's because you assume I won't proxy 2 rax him first then go for that SCV 2 rax all-in
That hardly changes my point, that people claiming today's diamonds are at the level of WOL's pros are full of shit.
Yes i agree with that tho. But like firecake said, gm now ( not low gm NA ) i think could win these old WOL tournaments ( with the right build order/meta of course ).
I got gm with my 'offrace' currently and I'm complete ass. I was 100% better back then that I am now. I play just as fast but my reaction speed and mouse accuracy have gone down due to old man syndrome. Playing vs myself back then I would dumpster myself with an aggressive blink build.
Trying to draw parallels between the game then vs now is a fruitless argument.
Many players from the oldern days if they were to play now, they would actually be able to elevate their play, so it's not like we're more talented, it's just that now it's better practice and people have more hours of playing/watching. Nestea is a good example of a player with low execution, who really won a lot back then. I think as soon as MC comes in, the game starts to get more execution based and we would still be outmicroed by these guys, by their sheer talent alone. Current level > WoL level, but at the same time pro's > average joe's.
That hardly changes my point, that people claiming today's diamonds are at the level of WOL's pros are full of shit.
Yes i agree with that tho. But like firecake said, gm now ( not low gm NA ) i think could win these old WOL tournaments ( with the right build order/meta of course ).
I got gm with my 'offrace' currently and I'm complete ass. I was 100% better back then that I am now. I play just as fast but my reaction speed and mouse accuracy have gone down due to old man syndrome. Playing vs myself back then I would dumpster myself with an aggressive blink build.
Trying to draw parallels between the game then vs now is a fruitless argument.
Ok so people training and tryharding for years are worse and worse over years, seems logic ! I suppose u got gm in NA which is the less competitive gm over there by far, yes maybe the gm NA is easier now than back then, maybe.
I honestly think this is something that can not be compared. You have to to keep in mind the information is much larger the longer something exists. This doesn't make the players bad, we are looking at 2 completely different times. This debate comes up all the time in sports also. I'm shocked that people actually attempt to compare the players in the two eras.
I also agree with Agh, I do think that GM is much easier to achieve for players than it was back in the previous years. This is probably mainly due to the field of players is a much smaller pool than before, and we have a lot of great players who left SC2 over the years. We still have greatly skilled players, but the field is just smaller, which might make it easier to achieve GM vs the past
i invite you to watch reynor's games in the recent GSL groups. has anyone heard of a 16Y/O player playing with such knowledge of everything his race can do to not only put up a fight, but eke out a win?
would any of this be even remotely as possible without the efforts and reference of players before him? the fact of the matter is, it's bound to happen. it's ridiculous at best to make the assertion that this OP does. if i knew apple stocks were going to raise back then, i'd be a millionaire with just a few hundred stock. i knew it was possible, i just didn't do it. it is completely and utterly hindsight.
players now, especially young ones, can absorb information and play at a relevant level faster than anyone else so long as there is the will to do it. this was the case at all times, but helped now by the advent of information travelling faster than before. if you know what works and what doesn't, you can quickly focus your efforts on a style that could work but with more practice. you no longer waste your time on something that is workable but invariably fruitless.
if the early GSL vets didn't put in the hours that they did, you could be damn sure we'd still be impressed by simple tricks for even longer. these are the kind of sports arguments that need to go.
On July 05 2018 07:21 nanaoei wrote: i invite you to watch reynor's games in the recent GSL groups. has anyone heard of a 16Y/O player playing with such knowledge of everything his race can do to not only put up a fight, but eke out a win?
There were that one dude, I don't know if you heard of him : Life
After 4 years without so much as touching the game, I played vs the A.I for a couple of hours to brush it off and learn one build (1rax cc into double medivac drop). Well, I got to masters league after only dropping one game, so yea.. this whole theory that people got better? Pure bullshit, everyone is still bad garbaggio.
p.s : I was only mid masters in most seasons of WoL, one season I got to high masters.
pros seem to be pretty perfect now. dunno how far you can get with just one build. i will say that the early wol players were using different units than today. people are still searching for grandmaster
On July 05 2018 07:21 nanaoei wrote: i invite you to watch reynor's games in the recent GSL groups. has anyone heard of a 16Y/O player playing with such knowledge of everything his race can do to not only put up a fight, but eke out a win?
Flash turned pro at 14 and won his first OSL at 16. Reynor's rise is cool and impressive but there have been several others who had similar performances/outperformed at that age.
On July 26 2018 03:12 IshinShishi wrote: After 4 years without so much as touching the game, I played vs the A.I for a couple of hours to brush it off and learn one build (1rax cc into double medivac drop). Well, I got to masters league after only dropping one game, so yea.. this whole theory that people got better? Pure bullshit, everyone is still bad garbaggio.
p.s : I was only mid masters in most seasons of WoL, one season I got to high masters.
I would say that the OP talks about pro level players. That it might be easier to get ranked higher for lower level players might be due to the smaller playerbase - or just because of the ladder revamp in 2016. Also one game is hardly representative. I got ranked platinum earlier this year after one game (my best placement was gold so far) - but I clearly didn't belong there (or just really barely) but got ranked into it because I got really lucky against a diamond player in my placement match.
On July 26 2018 03:12 IshinShishi wrote: After 4 years without so much as touching the game, I played vs the A.I for a couple of hours to brush it off and learn one build (1rax cc into double medivac drop). Well, I got to masters league after only dropping one game, so yea.. this whole theory that people got better? Pure bullshit, everyone is still bad garbaggio.
p.s : I was only mid masters in most seasons of WoL, one season I got to high masters.
I would say that the OP talks about pro level players. That it might be easier to get ranked higher for lower level players might be due to the smaller playerbase - or just because of the ladder revamp in 2016. Also one game is hardly representative. I got ranked platinum earlier this year after one game (my best placement was gold so far) - but I clearly didn't belong there (or just really barely) but got ranked into it because I got really lucky against a diamond player in my placement match.
I think you misunderstood what I meant, I said that I only lost once from unranked to masters after not playing for 4 years, people still can't macro or follow a build order properly at all.
On July 26 2018 03:12 IshinShishi wrote: After 4 years without so much as touching the game, I played vs the A.I for a couple of hours to brush it off and learn one build (1rax cc into double medivac drop). Well, I got to masters league after only dropping one game, so yea.. this whole theory that people got better? Pure bullshit, everyone is still bad garbaggio.
p.s : I was only mid masters in most seasons of WoL, one season I got to high masters.
I would say that the OP talks about pro level players. That it might be easier to get ranked higher for lower level players might be due to the smaller playerbase - or just because of the ladder revamp in 2016. Also one game is hardly representative. I got ranked platinum earlier this year after one game (my best placement was gold so far) - but I clearly didn't belong there (or just really barely) but got ranked into it because I got really lucky against a diamond player in my placement match.
I think you misunderstood what I meant, I said that I only lost once from unranked to masters after not playing for 4 years, people still can't macro or follow a build order properly at all.
True, but Blizzard changed the league boundaries, so master league is a lot bigger now than it was four years ago in percentage terms. It was 2% back then, now it's 7%. Reaching low master now is the same as reaching mid to low diamond back then.
For pros though, personally I don't think there's been any significant change in skill since 2011 but it's impossible to compare. Our current pros would destroy old pros in the current version of the game, and the old pros would destroy current pros in the old version. So you'd have to decide on a version to play and pluck out of the air some 'fair' amount of practice each group can have (otherwise the group with more practice in that version will just win) and it all gets silly. Even if you just specify a certain period of time in which they can practice, their characteristics will change as they play, so the two groups are no longer the authentic pros of old or the ones at the start of the challenge and you're not really testing what you set out to test.
Reason for all this non sense? Why were players bad back then?
Okey let's see. I use Serral as an example.
With his account [ENCE]Serral he seems to have the first games 10.11.2013.. Oh not really he was grandmaster then in 2013. He has been grandmaster whole that time. But surely he had got other accounts before that. Probably he started playing 2011 or 2010?
So why are pro players so good nowadays? They have just practiced what 5-8 years. Back then 2011 or 2010 they didnt have possibility to practice that long. Surprise that you get better with practice? :D
Would these old semi-pro's have a chance today vs modern masters? I don't think so. Hell, even I could've done what this zerg did in that game and win.
On June 26 2018 09:01 billynasty wrote: Back in the day, humans used to live in caves. They were so bad back then they didnt even know what a wheel was. Were Neanderthals really that bad or did it just take time for them to learn & evolve?
Rome wasn't built in a day. In a game that has as many variables & unit interactions as Starcraft 2, i think it's only common sense that the skill of the players at the beginning of the games existence would pale in comparison to where pro's are at today. The players back then were inventing the meta. They didn't have the luxury of years worth of practice, vods, guides etc
It is safe to say however that the pro's today are higher skilled than the pros during the WOL era. But to say they were 'bad', that just seems to be unfair imo.
Obviously I'm not talking down MVP or anything, I was mostly talking about very early stuff like the Maru match I was referring to (linked below), where Cella sits on 18 drones, some larvas and 300 minerals, and doesn't make drones, and where he waits until he has 500 gaz to throw down the 1.5 base spire (after cancelling a roach warren). So yeah I guess we could say "oh well he was waiting to see he was getting 1 base all-in so that's why he didn't build more drones" or "tech paths weren't understood back then", but it still seems weird to me.
EDIT : Alright I checked the other games of that series and it's not thaaaat bad
Not gonna step in the discussion, but the part when Artosis goes "wow super reaper micro!" when maru kill one slow lings with a reaper made me laugh so hard, but ya the whole game is so stupid.
By the way I didn't watch/play early wol, was creep no a thing?
Edit: nevermind I am gonna step in the discussion It's kind of surprising how bad, or at least flawed these games are, you would guess that long time RTS players would jump in more quickly, some of those build just seems to make no sense at all and the mechanics are sometime strangely lacking. I am not talking overall WOL here just the first few months of open, I watched a couple of games on youtube, maybe some of them were really relative new comer to RTS because I fell like if you take a couple of high master/gm SC2 players and put them in lets say AOE2 for 3-4 months it's probably not gonna look nice but it will be better then this. Anyway perhaps I'm wrongs it dosen't really matter.
I havent watch SC2 in a long long long long time…..and even then….how many times have you heard Artosis or Tasteless saying this is fantastic/amazing/the best whatever we have ever seen?
I dont know how it is today or if they even still commentate SC2, but that pair was always prone to overhype things (although it worked with their style and people liked it). Please dont confuse amazing things done at the time with amazing things as shouted by casters. Not the same.
Would these old semi-pro's have a chance today vs modern masters? I don't think so. Hell, even I could've done what this zerg did in that game and win.
did you even look at the date on that video? it's from the beta before the game was even released. maps were also very different from modern maps... rush distance is like less than half what it is now
Would these old semi-pro's have a chance today vs modern masters? I don't think so. Hell, even I could've done what this zerg did in that game and win.
Two players who were never really pro level (Edit: Forgot that PainUser had one good MLG result from 2010 though I see) from before the game was even released? Could you have found a more cherrypicked example?
i dont see why its so hard to understand. when the game first came out the understanding was more limited and the mechanics weren't quite there. the people who were playing were people who couldn't cut it in brood war. that's why when kespa switched over everyone got stomped, just like the "controversial" article elephant in the room predicted. only it wasn't flash and jaedong doing the heavy stomping, but rather soulkey, innovation, rain and etc. but otherwise the article was spot on. yes players from today could travel back in time and just STOMP the early GSLs. just look at the creep spread FFS, nestea had NONE at first. and nestea, venerable veteran champion that he is, would not make it in today's cutthroat gsl at all. but take even a foreigner like scarlett and she could go in and win the first GSL ez pz.
Except that the majority of players who dominate now were like B teamers in Broodwar or the fact that players like MC among others stood with the best of the best despite playing from the beginning.
While I agree that the over skill was lower then than it is now, I wouldn't really call it bad. And the thing is, the game was much different. You take a fm now, and they have to relearn all the WoL maps and removals of units, and I doubt they'd do that well. Cause the whole point is that you drop a low tier fm or pro player now, and they can pretty much win in WoL at their current skill.
The idea that the "good" players were just the guys who were pretty good at BW is just false. Most of the good people now were low tier in BW. There are a few who could have been good, like TY, soO, and Fantasy (who was already very good st BW).
The main principle of the Elephant in the Room article was that it would be the good and great players from BW who would stomp the competition.
But players like Zest, Taeja, herO, INnoVation, Life, Maru, and sOs had limited to no success ( Inno was rookie of the year, but that's about it) in BW, but they are all considered titans (except for Life) in terms of SC2 achievement.
On July 26 2018 12:41 fishjie wrote: i dont see why its so hard to understand. when the game first came out the understanding was more limited and the mechanics weren't quite there. the people who were playing were people who couldn't cut it in brood war. that's why when kespa switched over everyone got stomped, just like the "controversial" article elephant in the room predicted. only it wasn't flash and jaedong doing the heavy stomping, but rather soulkey, innovation, rain and etc. but otherwise the article was spot on. yes players from today could travel back in time and just STOMP the early GSLs. just look at the creep spread FFS, nestea had NONE at first. and nestea, venerable veteran champion that he is, would not make it in today's cutthroat gsl at all. but take even a foreigner like scarlett and she could go in and win the first GSL ez pz.
I think the argument was that plat/dia players from today would be able to win early GSLs, not the best foreigners from today in early GSLs.
On July 26 2018 12:41 fishjie wrote: i dont see why its so hard to understand. when the game first came out the understanding was more limited and the mechanics weren't quite there. the people who were playing were people who couldn't cut it in brood war. that's why when kespa switched over everyone got stomped, just like the "controversial" article elephant in the room predicted. only it wasn't flash and jaedong doing the heavy stomping, but rather soulkey, innovation, rain and etc. but otherwise the article was spot on. yes players from today could travel back in time and just STOMP the early GSLs. just look at the creep spread FFS, nestea had NONE at first. and nestea, venerable veteran champion that he is, would not make it in today's cutthroat gsl at all. but take even a foreigner like scarlett and she could go in and win the first GSL ez pz.
I think the argument was that plat/dia players from today would be able to win early GSLs, not the best foreigners from today in early GSLs.
On July 26 2018 12:41 fishjie wrote: i dont see why its so hard to understand. when the game first came out the understanding was more limited and the mechanics weren't quite there. the people who were playing were people who couldn't cut it in brood war. that's why when kespa switched over everyone got stomped, just like the "controversial" article elephant in the room predicted. only it wasn't flash and jaedong doing the heavy stomping, but rather soulkey, innovation, rain and etc. but otherwise the article was spot on. yes players from today could travel back in time and just STOMP the early GSLs. just look at the creep spread FFS, nestea had NONE at first. and nestea, venerable veteran champion that he is, would not make it in today's cutthroat gsl at all. but take even a foreigner like scarlett and she could go in and win the first GSL ez pz.
I think the argument was that plat/dia players from today would be able to win early GSLs, not the best foreigners from today in early GSLs.
i certainly believe mid masters players could
That's exactly my point, there's just no way in hell they could, perhaps the top 10 GM players on NA or EU could win a GSL back then, but random mid to high master players (let alone diamond)? That's completely delusional, I got to masters in 1 day after a 4 year hiatus and I am utterly terrible.
What people don't seem to understand is that the game was very different back then. All-Ins were so prevalent not just because of the maps but because offensive and defensive capabilities of all the races were not balanced at all which combined with the short rush distances of many maps made it way harder to expand. There were no timings to figure out it was just way harder to defend. Spreading creep was more difficult because before the Queen buff you wouldn't build multiple Queens early and you had just one or two active tumors and needed the energy to inject. If you think a random masters player could just go back in time and beat those early pros because of his mechanics you are completely delusional.
Masters could make it because they have now the knowledge. We now know 1 base strat doesn't work.
But on early wol, they don't and the first things they tried was 1 base build.
But as soon as old star pros would realize their builds are bad and they start picking the right builds, they would stay on top of the ladder.
Of course as no time travel exists, this will never happen, so it's just a way to say that everyone improves even those who stay on the same league are better.
On July 26 2018 21:23 Tyrhanius wrote: so it's just a way to say that everyone improves even those who stay on the same league are better.
to add to this point...
the first thing that happens a few months after the release of mainstream popular games like Wings of Liberty is that the casual noobs leave the competitive modes of the game. this makes the ladder harder. so if you were in Platinum in 2011 and were still in Platinum in 2015 you were a far better player.
I'm not sure how well this applies to the very top and very bottom of the ladder though. In the middle of the ladder the casual noobs leaving makes a big difference.
On July 26 2018 13:13 FrkFrJss wrote: Except that the majority of players who dominate now were like B teamers in Broodwar or the fact that players like MC among others stood with the best of the best despite playing from the beginning.
While I agree that the over skill was lower then than it is now, I wouldn't really call it bad. And the thing is, the game was much different. You take a fm now, and they have to relearn all the WoL maps and removals of units, and I doubt they'd do that well. Cause the whole point is that you drop a low tier fm or pro player now, and they can pretty much win in WoL at their current skill.
The idea that the "good" players were just the guys who were pretty good at BW is just false. Most of the good people now were low tier in BW. There are a few who could have been good, like TY, soO, and Fantasy (who was already very good st BW).
The main principle of the Elephant in the Room article was that it would be the good and great players from BW who would stomp the competition.
But players like Zest, Taeja, herO, INnoVation, Life, Maru, and sOs had limited to no success ( Inno was rookie of the year, but that's about it) in BW, but they are all considered titans (except for Life) in terms of SC2 achievement.
MC was dominating until kespa switched over. he hung on for a while but eventually retired to coach LOL. look at all the original champions like MC, Nestea, MVP (ok he had a wrist injury so he has a legit excuse), MMA, DRG, jjakji, leenock and so on. They couldn't compete with kespa. just look at the first GSL. no creep spread and missed mules. in the final hopetorture vs fruitdealer, i recall clearly one part where hopetorture suddenly dropped a ton of mules because he had forgotten. so yes, a master from today could stomp hopetorture. hopetorture still streams randomly today and you can see he doesn't do so well. i don't think he'd be that dominant on the ladder. or how about tsl rain (not protoss kespa rain)? or inca? or virus? or TOP? you forgot all the players who were competing in the GSL back then - not all of them were nestea/mc/mvp level. players from today could definitely wipe the floor with them, and this is proven because you can wawtch some of these forgotten ones stream from time to time.
the elephant in room incorrectly predicted that flash and jaedong would dominate. but it was correct that kespa would dominate. the early players were nowhere near as good as the later players. The only player from back then who is still a god now is Maru. But even so, early maru is nowhere near as good as current maru. His play has vastly improved.
On July 26 2018 13:13 FrkFrJss wrote: Except that the majority of players who dominate now were like B teamers in Broodwar or the fact that players like MC among others stood with the best of the best despite playing from the beginning.
While I agree that the over skill was lower then than it is now, I wouldn't really call it bad. And the thing is, the game was much different. You take a fm now, and they have to relearn all the WoL maps and removals of units, and I doubt they'd do that well. Cause the whole point is that you drop a low tier fm or pro player now, and they can pretty much win in WoL at their current skill.
The idea that the "good" players were just the guys who were pretty good at BW is just false. Most of the good people now were low tier in BW. There are a few who could have been good, like TY, soO, and Fantasy (who was already very good st BW).
The main principle of the Elephant in the Room article was that it would be the good and great players from BW who would stomp the competition.
But players like Zest, Taeja, herO, INnoVation, Life, Maru, and sOs had limited to no success ( Inno was rookie of the year, but that's about it) in BW, but they are all considered titans (except for Life) in terms of SC2 achievement.
MC was dominating until kespa switched over. he hung on for a while but eventually retired to coach LOL. look at all the original champions like MC, Nestea, MVP (ok he had a wrist injury so he has a legit excuse), MMA, DRG, jjakji, leenock and so on. They couldn't compete with kespa. just look at the first GSL. no creep spread and missed mules. in the final hopetorture vs fruitdealer, i recall clearly one part where hopetorture suddenly dropped a ton of mules because he had forgotten. so yes, a master from today could stomp hopetorture. hopetorture still streams randomly today and you can see he doesn't do so well. i don't think he'd be that dominant on the ladder. or how about tsl rain (not protoss kespa rain)? or inca? or virus? or TOP? you forgot all the players who were competing in the GSL back then - not all of them were nestea/mc/mvp level. players from today could definitely wipe the floor with them, and this is proven because you can wawtch some of these forgotten ones stream from time to time.
the elephant in room incorrectly predicted that flash and jaedong would dominate. but it was correct that kespa would dominate. the early players were nowhere near as good as the later players. The only player from back then who is still a god now is Maru. But even so, early maru is nowhere near as good as current maru. His play has vastly improved.
Well I mean.... Maru has been playing sc2 8+ years for a living....
On July 26 2018 21:23 Tyrhanius wrote: Masters could make it because they have now the knowledge. We now know 1 base strat doesn't work.
But on early wol, they don't and the first things they tried was 1 base build.
But as soon as old star pros would realize their builds are bad and they start picking the right builds, they would stay on top of the ladder.
Of course as no time travel exists, this will never happen, so it's just a way to say that everyone improves even those who stay on the same league are better.
did you even play early wol? 1 base builds were the only thing that worked
EPT
It's kind of surprising how bad, or at least flawed these games are, you would guess that long time RTS players would jump in more quickly, some of those build just seems to make no sense at all and the mechanics are sometime strangely lacking. I am not talking overall WOL here just the first few months of open, I watched a couple of games on youtube, maybe some of them were really relative new comer to RTS because I fell like if you take a couple of high master/gm SC2 players and put them in lets say AOE2 for 3-4 months it's probably not gonna look nice but it will be better then this. Anyway perhaps I'm wrongs it dosen't really matter. 
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Life
