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I have been thinking a lot about Serral and Maru lately and I think now I understand why this situation is very tricky:
1) It has been always the case that the top SC 2 players were in Korea. This means, if someone could win 3 GSLs in a row, that person would undoubtedly be the best player in the world and such an accomplishment would be considered an absolutely historic one. And this was also one of the reasons GSL was so hype: all the best players are here and they are all trying very hard. This assumption has been ingrained in us for so long that we no longer think about it, we don't question it and we don't consider what it would mean if it were false.
2) However, Serral proved that this year the above assumption is false. He has dominated all the top Koreans except Maru. So we can no longer assume that "all of the contenders for the best player were in Korea". As a result, we should look differently at those accomplishments by Maru; this year's GSL did not involve all the best players. I don't think anyone can dispute this fact, unless if you think Serral is not among the top 4 best players in the world which is a ridiculous assumption. So even if you place Serral as the no. 4 (which again, I cannot see how you can place him lower than no 2), the logical conclusion is that the GSLs this year did not involve all the contenders of the best player in the world. But of course, the WCS tournaments also did not involve all the contenders and in fact objectively, WCS were far less densely populated with the "contenders for the best player in the world" compared to GSL.
3) So what does this leave us with? I think with the reasonable conclusion that Maru and Serral are both no. 1 and no. 2 but so far Serral has had a better showing in the tournaments that they both have competed in this year with the caveat that they all have been "weekend" tournaments. On the other hand, the GSL format is also a little bit weird with the player selected groups so all in all, we do not have a definitive answer to the Serral vs Maru question.
Could Maru beat Serral if Serral were competing in GSL? Absolutely, but the other way around was also absolutely possible.
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Finally a voice of reason
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On November 14 2018 02:36 imp42 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2018 01:52 Charoisaur wrote:
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I don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in korean sc2 is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer. that's a very interesting observation actually. I'm curious how exactly mechanics of aging players deteriorate over time. Do you think it can be measured by apm? In other fields (say software development for example) less fluid intelligence and slower speed are compensated with more experience. This surely holds in sc2 as well, but in sc2 we might be able to better separate the two components. if we simplify "skill = mechanics + experience (knowledge)", then the fact players get worse with age means the gain in experience cannot make up for the loss in mechanics. What are your thoughts?
I think it's more on the fly critical thinking than anything. I don't think players are slowing down as in their hands can't keep up. Just look at painists: they play for decades, keeping up the same speed and talent as they drift into their 50's+. Their ability to memorize a song and play it flawlessly is not hindered by their age nearly as quickly as we might think, and I believe the same can be said for a SC2 player's APM. The reason players get "slower" at a faster rate than a pianist does is because the human brain's ability to process information and critically think on the fly begins to slow down quite early in a person's life, starting in a person's early 20's if I remember correctly. Because of this, seeing and processing new information in the game takes longer in the brain, causing players to react slower and press buttons later than they used to.
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I don't want to detract from Serral's accomplishments. He has done something no foreigner has done in the past, so he definitely deserves the credit. However, I think people are overreacting to something that happened when the competitive scene's health has been declining in SC2, especially in South Korea. The Korean scene has not been as rigorous since almost all teams, except for Jin Air, had disbanded. Teams played integral part in maintaining a rigorous competitive scene Korea. They allowed players to focus on playing the game and practice more efficiently. Likely related to the issue of no team, the second problem is that South Korean scene has not seen a new high level pro in years. I can't remember the last time I saw a brand new player since Dream. Most Korean players are aging, and this definitely affects both their practice and tournament performances. With the lack of new talents to invigorate the game, the Korean scene has steadily lost the highly competitive environment that gave players incentives to come up with new game play. With all that said, I feel that Serral's accomplishment is likely a mixture of foreign scene improving as well as severely declining Korean scene.
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As someone previously pointed out, there isn't new blood and the korean scene has less depth but top players stay strong; they might have aged, sure, but Maru, the one who dominated this year in Korea, was born in 1997!
Serral won Blizzcon facing the very top Koreans, not the supposedly lacking ones mid tier Koreans.
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its not like older players cant keep up with the speed in one or two games, the problem is that your playstyle will gradually adapt to a slower gameplay because you can't keep training balls to the walls like you could when you were young.
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WCS
