StarCraft II may have a new balance patch, but its best player remains the same. WCS Global Champion Serral defeated INnoVation 4-3 to claim the championship at HomeStory Cup XVIII, the first major tournament after the 4.7.1 balance patch.
After an underwhelming WCS 2018 campaign, INnoVation put in one of his best tournament performances in nearly a year. He gave the viewers a taste of vintage INnoVation in game one of the finals, out-producing and outlasting Serral in a bloody macro game. INnoVation was unable to repeat that feat, but still managed to go up 3-2 with expertly executed proxy-rax rushes.
Unfortunately for INnoVation, Serral was no stranger to fighting back from a deficit. The Finnish Phenom was imperious as ever, seemingly taking the final two points at will with a decisive roach-ravager timing followed by a masterful macro game.
For the rest of the field, HSC told the abridged story of WCS 2017-2018. Non-Korean players put in surprisingly strong performances early on, with ShoWTimE and Reynor taking first place in their groups. In the upset of the tournament, 2017 Global Champion Rogue was eliminated in the group stage after dropping matches to ShoWTiME, uThermal, and Namshar. However, the Korean pros proved to be sharper in the bracket phase of the tournament, winning the majority of BO5's against foreigners-not-named-Serral.
The newly un-retired TaeJa was another person-of-interest at the tournament, achieving a top eight finish in his first live event since concluding his military service. While other past champions in MMA and PartinG have struggled to regain their form after returning from hiatuses, TaeJa's strong performances (including a 2-3 loss to Serral) suggested that he may have the sheer talent needed to shake off the rust from a 20 month military service break.
Is there a list of the best matches? Match ratings? Old tournament threads had them but I don't see it anymore. I understand there were a ton of matches.
On November 26 2018 11:15 Moobla wrote: Is there a list of the best matches? Match ratings? Old tournament threads had them but I don't see it anymore. I understand there were a ton of matches.
I can recommend Serral vs Bunny from the groupstage(best games imho), vs Taeja and vs Innovation in addiction to Reynor vs UThermal as TvZ. I liked Elazer vs Solar too(ZvZ).
On November 26 2018 11:15 Moobla wrote: Is there a list of the best matches? Match ratings? Old tournament threads had them but I don't see it anymore. I understand there were a ton of matches.
I can recommend Serral vs Bunny from the groupstage(best games imho), vs Taeja and vs Innovation in addiction to Reynor vs UThermal as TvZ. I liked Elazer vs Solar too(ZvZ).
This was one of my favorite HSCs ever. I'm so glad INno got his wish facing Serral in the finals. I hope that doesn't sound like INno trash talk because it isn't intended to be that way. I was just thinking that the biggest disappointment of Blizzcon was that we never got to see the Maru vs Serral showdown, but this time we got the promised match and it didn't disappoint.
Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
The guy is just insane. Hasn't lost an offline bo3 since March.
Your thoughts?
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
I am not Serral's hardcore fanboy, but even now I was considering how unbelievably perfect he is. In fact I think that he plays one of best games I've ever seen in SCII history which I follow from the very beginning back in 2010. Some of his finishing moves with the balings against Taeja and Bogus were classical NesTea best matches moves. I can't put him as a personal favorite yet because I can't just determine a specific style of Serral like Dark, Rogue or Soulkey and DRG in the past. He just plays universal orthodox zerg but seriously... such a concentration and perfection I've never seen before even for a such long time of the whole year. I hope we see him in Code S very soon!
Seems to be some strong polling for most dominant run in SC2.
It's hard to argue, the only comparable runs would be Life, Zest and Maru I feel - and Serral's run has simply been longer and less blemished when you look at it as a whole. 7 premiers in a year is pretty ludicrous.
On November 26 2018 12:14 seemsgood wrote: Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
Naruto here. I do think INno will make a strong showing 2019 if the current patch stays. He was THE absolute best terran vs Zerg player during biomine meta. Obviously Zergs will get better vs it again as well but I believe in the machine.
Nice that Serral could finish strong. We had a great story no matter the outcome and we all won in that finals series. Few adjustments from both of these players and that might be a different Series
On November 26 2018 16:32 Veluvian wrote: I am not Serral's hardcore fanboy, but even now I was considering how unbelievably perfect he is. In fact I think that he plays one of best games I've ever seen in SCII history which I follow from the very beginning back in 2010. Some of his finishing moves with the balings against Taeja and Bogus were classical NesTea best matches moves. I can't put him as a personal favorite yet because I can't just determine a specific style of Serral like Dark, Rogue or Soulkey and DRG in the past. He just plays universal orthodox zerg but seriously... such a concentration and perfection I've never seen before even for a such long time of the whole year. I hope we see him in Code S very soon!
On November 26 2018 16:43 Dave4 wrote: Seems to be some strong polling for most dominant run in SC2.
It's hard to argue, the only comparable runs would be Life, Zest and Maru I feel - and Serral's run has simply been longer and less blemished when you look at it as a whole. 7 premiers in a year is pretty ludicrous.
Well, how long one considers Serrals dominance highly depends on when his dominance startet this year. The fact remains that WCS competition still is not as hard as GSL competition. Thus the begin of Serrals period of utter dominance only can with certainty only be GSL vs the World where he destroyed korean competition. This would contain roughly for months until now. Maru's period of dominance began with WESG and ended with his 3rd GSL victory in septembre which contains roughly 6 months. Yeah... I still think that Maru's 3 GSL victories in a row are a more impressive feat.
Serral might be the best player right now but one has to consider that he has a big advantage against the korean players. He is profiting from the weirdly strong EU Zergplay which doesn't affect korean competition all that much which makes it hard for korean terrans and protosses to train against a style like his. But also he is not suffering the bigger vulnerability that a league system like GSL brings with itself. He simply never is confronted with a extremely good player who can prepare solely for him for an entire week or even more. This is why I still consider Maru as the player of the year.
On November 26 2018 17:42 fronkschnonk wrote: He simply never is confronted with a extremely good player who can prepare solely for him for an entire week or even more. This is why I still consider Maru as the player of the year.
a) every Korean at HSC said they prepared for Serral b) thats what I want from my "best player". to say, give me a week or two to prepare )))
I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say 1) Serral's run of dominance is incredibly impressive, and 2) It's different than if he had achieved such results in a GSL environment. Both can be true at the same time
On November 26 2018 11:50 Xain0n wrote: The average level of the players involved was very high, this one was better than majority of the HSC.
Are XIX and XX going to take place in Las Vegas?
XIX was still going to be held in Krefeld/Europe, but XX they're hoping for Vegas. I'm excited for it, I just hope it doesn't attempt to go "too big" and loses the HSC-feeling, but probably no risk
On November 26 2018 18:59 EEk1TwEEk wrote: Let's see Serral's results in 2019 before calling him "best of the best of the best" Remember Neeb in 2016 winning Kespa Cup and 3 WCS?
Hope Koreans will adapt
But how do you adapt to your opponent just playing better than you? I think that it's the best thing about Serral, its really hard for you to adapt for his playstyle, because most of the time it's just standard. Inno had a good shot with his proxies, but Serral was the one to adapt, and after putting himself to a disadvatage by playing a suboptimal opener for the last two games. Of course the run will end, but it won't be because of some adaptation, it will just be someone finding an ever higher level or Serral dropping off. This form is a monster
On November 26 2018 16:43 Dave4 wrote: Seems to be some strong polling for most dominant run in SC2.
It's hard to argue, the only comparable runs would be Life, Zest and Maru I feel - and Serral's run has simply been longer and less blemished when you look at it as a whole. 7 premiers in a year is pretty ludicrous.
Well, how long one considers Serrals dominance highly depends on when his dominance startet this year. The fact remains that WCS competition still is not as hard as GSL competition. Thus the begin of Serrals period of utter dominance only can with certainty only be GSL vs the World where he destroyed korean competition. This would contain roughly for months until now. Maru's period of dominance began with WESG and ended with his 3rd GSL victory in septembre which contains roughly 6 months. Yeah... I still think that Maru's 3 GSL victories in a row are a more impressive feat.
Serral might be the best player right now but one has to consider that he has a big advantage against the korean players. He is profiting from the weirdly strong EU Zergplay which doesn't affect korean competition all that much which makes it hard for korean terrans and protosses to train against a style like his. But also he is not suffering the bigger vulnerability that a league system like GSL brings with itself. He simply never is confronted with a extremely good player who can prepare solely for him for an entire week or even more. This is why I still consider Maru as the player of the year.
Hello friend, I respect your opinion on the matter.
Even if you value WCS less than GSL I find it weird that people are willing to completely disregard it and say it doesn't matter. If he had lost those tournaments I'm sure you'd be pointing to that and saying it proved he wasn't good.
The fact is despite better players generally winning in SC2, there remains a high degree of volatility which is why players like Has or Seed or Sniper can sometimes reach a finals.
The most impressive thing about Serral to me is how ridiculously long his streak has been. It bucks any metrics on randomness in the game. Keep in mind back in the early days of SC2 people argued things like "there will never be a Bonjwa in SC2 because it is too volatile". Games can be won or lost on one single poor engagement, but Serral has mastered the game so much that he has not lost a single offline bo3 since March. It's insanity.
Sure I'll agree 3x GSL beats 3 or even 4 WCS but when you add it all up Serral is simply not losing regardless of who he is playing or where at the moment. He is clutch as heck. And the whole 'noone is preparing for him properly' thing is just rubbish to me, he has the single biggest target on his back in SC2.
Best foreigner ever Best year of SC2 player ever Best run ever
Stylistic he is just too strong, he holds rushes, he backstabs, he macros like a boss, his army splitting and decision making is probably the best ever..
His games are simply pure joy and fun to watch.. his compositions seem to be flawless and when he loses it always seems to be because of super play by the other player of simply being caught by rush or cheese
Serral reminds me of Life but with a better macro and late game, absolutely decisive and makes some player look silly
On November 26 2018 12:14 seemsgood wrote: Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
Naruto here. I do think INno will make a strong showing 2019 if the current patch stays. He was THE absolute best terran vs Zerg player during biomine meta. Obviously Zergs will get better vs it again as well but I believe in the machine.
Nice that Serral could finish strong. We had a great story no matter the outcome and we all won in that finals series. Few adjustments from both of these players and that might be a different Series
Hasn't his micro gotten worse tho? He seems still as good macro / multitask wise but his micro seemed sloppy at times in TvZ
Very nice recap. Maybe soO early exit is worth mentionning too. I have the feeling he is already not playing SC2 anymore or, so to say, he is retiring more and more...
On November 26 2018 12:14 seemsgood wrote: Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
Naruto here. I do think INno will make a strong showing 2019 if the current patch stays. He was THE absolute best terran vs Zerg player during biomine meta. Obviously Zergs will get better vs it again as well but I believe in the machine.
Nice that Serral could finish strong. We had a great story no matter the outcome and we all won in that finals series. Few adjustments from both of these players and that might be a different Series
Hasn't his micro gotten worse tho? He seems still as good macro / multitask wise but his micro seemed sloppy at times in TvZ
Micro wise he was better at BlizzCon where he was displaying pure mechanical perfection; here he made more mistakes (even strategically, some of his decisions weren't on point as much, i guess it's the new patch) but probably he didn't train as hard and i expect to see him back to his godlike form in the future.
On November 26 2018 12:14 seemsgood wrote: Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
Naruto here. I do think INno will make a strong showing 2019 if the current patch stays. He was THE absolute best terran vs Zerg player during biomine meta. Obviously Zergs will get better vs it again as well but I believe in the machine.
Nice that Serral could finish strong. We had a great story no matter the outcome and we all won in that finals series. Few adjustments from both of these players and that might be a different Series
Hasn't his micro gotten worse tho? He seems still as good macro / multitask wise but his micro seemed sloppy at times in TvZ
Micro wise he was better at BlizzCon where he was displaying pure mechanical perfection; here he made more mistakes (even strategically, some of his decisions weren't on point as much, i guess it's the new patch) but probably he didn't train as hard and i expect to see him back to his godlike form in the future.
Congratulations to Serral with another win. Really impressed with how Serral adjusted during this tournament. His ZvT looked very vulnerable in the beginning, but you can almost see how he improves map by map. It's kinda hard to believe.
Now I hope he comes to Korea to participate in the GSL. Will be interesting to see if he can go toe-to-toe with the best Terrans in the world - and if he can keep up his top play in the other matchups as well. It will also be interesting to see how he performs in a Starleague where preparation in advance plays a much bigger role. His ability to adjust on-the-go is pretty terrifying, but how will he do with entirely player-specific preparation?
It was another amazing HSC! Big thanks to everyone who did it.
On November 26 2018 12:14 seemsgood wrote: Good run by Bogus. He did improve alot but the late game transition planning wasn't quite there. TY and maru would put a better macro game imo Still baffled why did TY choose to proxy rogue in game 5
Naruto here. I do think INno will make a strong showing 2019 if the current patch stays. He was THE absolute best terran vs Zerg player during biomine meta. Obviously Zergs will get better vs it again as well but I believe in the machine.
Nice that Serral could finish strong. We had a great story no matter the outcome and we all won in that finals series. Few adjustments from both of these players and that might be a different Series
Hasn't his micro gotten worse tho? He seems still as good macro / multitask wise but his micro seemed sloppy at times in TvZ
Micro wise he was better at BlizzCon where he was displaying pure mechanical perfection; here he made more mistakes (even strategically, some of his decisions weren't on point as much, i guess it's the new patch) but probably he didn't train as hard and i expect to see him back to his godlike form in the future.
INno wasn't at BlizzCon 2018
Lol sorry i thought you were speaking of Serral xD Inno's micro was good early in the games but appeared go get way worse in bigger engagements, he used to be sharper at his prime; however, LoTV is more demanding than HoTS.
On November 26 2018 19:52 Serimek wrote: Very nice recap. Maybe soO early exit is worth mentionning too. I have the feeling he is already not playing SC2 anymore or, so to say, he is retiring more and more...
I am also not sure he has the fire inside him still. I'm afraid that blizzcon loss really got the better of him and finally broke him. He still made Ro4 in 2018 GSL S1 from "muscle memory" but the downhill after that point is really noticeable.
On November 26 2018 20:02 sneakyfox wrote: Congratulations to Serral with another win. Really impressed with how Serral adjusted during this tournament. His ZvT looked very vulnerable in the beginning, but you can almost see how he improves map by map. It's kinda hard to believe.
Now I hope he comes to Korea to participate in the GSL. Will be interesting to see if he can go toe-to-toe with the best Terrans in the world - and if he can keep up his top play in the other matchups as well. It will also be interesting to see how he performs in a Starleague where preparation in advance plays a much bigger role. His ability to adjust on-the-go is pretty terrifying, but how will he do with entirely player-specific preparation?
It was another amazing HSC! Big thanks to everyone who did it.
11/25/2018 Serral FI Z 4–3 T KR INnoVation 11/25/2018 Serral FI Z 3–0 T KR Bunny 11/24/2018 Serral FI Z 3–2 T KR TaeJa 11/23/2018 Serral FI Z 2–1 T KR Bunny 08/05/2018 Serral FI Z 1–0 T KR Maru 08/04/2018 Serral FI Z 3–0 T KR INnoVation
As much as I'd also like to see him go to GSL, I don't think its fair to say we have to SEE if he can go toe-to-toe. I think he's proven he can, maybe not that he'll win each time, but that without a doubt, he can preform.
On November 26 2018 16:53 s.a.y wrote: After watching Broodwar and SC2 for the last 15+ years, never i have seen such a dominant player.
To go for so long and not to lose a single LAN match, he is beyond bonjwa status.
He was best foreigner of this year for sure. Best foreigner of all time for sure. Maybe even best player of 2018,if it's him or Maru, it's arguable. But imho it is a bit early to call him bonjwa. He certainly has the talent and the possibility to become the bonjwa tough. But for that he has to win some more on korean soil ...
once again roach ravager amove is saving zerg's ass from losing a whole series, weird to me that most terrans keep trying to beat it with small tank count at low ground instead of lifting 3rd and defend at high ground, like ty did.
It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
On November 26 2018 20:02 sneakyfox wrote: Congratulations to Serral with another win. Really impressed with how Serral adjusted during this tournament. His ZvT looked very vulnerable in the beginning, but you can almost see how he improves map by map. It's kinda hard to believe.
Now I hope he comes to Korea to participate in the GSL. Will be interesting to see if he can go toe-to-toe with the best Terrans in the world - and if he can keep up his top play in the other matchups as well. It will also be interesting to see how he performs in a Starleague where preparation in advance plays a much bigger role. His ability to adjust on-the-go is pretty terrifying, but how will he do with entirely player-specific preparation?
It was another amazing HSC! Big thanks to everyone who did it.
11/25/2018 Serral FI Z 4–3 T KR INnoVation 11/25/2018 Serral FI Z 3–0 T KR Bunny 11/24/2018 Serral FI Z 3–2 T KR TaeJa 11/23/2018 Serral FI Z 2–1 T KR Bunny 08/05/2018 Serral FI Z 1–0 T KR Maru 08/04/2018 Serral FI Z 3–0 T KR INnoVation
As much as I'd also like to see him go to GSL, I don't think its fair to say we have to SEE if he can go toe-to-toe. I think he's proven he can, maybe not that he'll win each time, but that without a doubt, he can preform.
Those are not the best Terrans though - even if they are better than the foreigner Terrans. The best are (or was) Maru and TY, and I would also put GuMiHo above the ones Serral already beat.
That's not saying Serral couldn't beat them, but we will have to wait and see him actually do it. Last time he played a top terran, he didn't take a single map, but he has obviously improved since then.
(And that Serral-Maru game should not be included in the list of wins, first of all because it was just a showmatch, second of all because it was just a Bo1)
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
I consider myself a Maru fanboy, for me his 3 GSL's in a row are the feat of this year in sc2. GSL is THE competition in sc scene since BW days, and even the fragile pro-scene that sc2 has nowadays in Korea continues being the battlefield where the best players play each other non stop. Maru winning 3 consecutives GSL's, vs players that know him so well, is something never achieved before in sc2 (don't know about BW). But. The level of dominance of Serral is just absurd. More than his titles, the dominance of this kid is the key. He just never loses. And this is too something new in sc2. Serral's consistence has destroyed the idea of sc2 being too volatile. I would love to see him playing GSL, seriously. Sorry for my english!
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
The game itself is harder now. Straight up.
It's difficult to stay on top of everything because the level of play has elevated and things are FAST in LotV. It is now STANDARD to micro on two fronts just to look like you belong on the same stage, but really 3-front engagements while macroing are the baseline for high-level play at the moment. When players are unable to manage all three fronts, they get called out for "sloppy" play-- in the past, just having three fronts at ALL would have made you a consistently dominant player.
Some of the first-person views from Serral's Blizzcon run were absolutely crazy. At one point he was harassing the 4th, microing a drop between the main and the third (without losing any units!), while making main army vs. main army pokes, and he was coming away ahead literally every trade while this was happening. It was insanity. None of these players in their prime were on that level. The game was simpler in the past, with maps featuring more abusable terrain structure, abusable base layout/placement, etc. The game revolved around timing pushes to win not just to do damage and get ahead. Simply executing a really good push with a couple of dropships moving on the edge of the map is no longer meant as a winning move the way it was in earlier eras.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
while i think that without a doubt serral is the best player of 2018, i usually refrain from absolute titles. to be called GOAT, serral needs to show his dominance over several years and prefferably win a GSL (ofc, that doesn't mean he needs to replicate this year's insane run).
that being said, you sound like a nostalgic old man who has problems adapting to modern times... plz note that i am not trying to ridicule you, but claiming that past achievements can't be surpassed, just because the conditions have changes, is not a valid arguement imo.
On November 26 2018 16:43 Dave4 wrote: Seems to be some strong polling for most dominant run in SC2.
It's hard to argue, the only comparable runs would be Life, Zest and Maru I feel - and Serral's run has simply been longer and less blemished when you look at it as a whole. 7 premiers in a year is pretty ludicrous.
Well, how long one considers Serrals dominance highly depends on when his dominance startet this year. The fact remains that WCS competition still is not as hard as GSL competition. Thus the begin of Serrals period of utter dominance only can with certainty only be GSL vs the World where he destroyed korean competition. This would contain roughly for months until now. Maru's period of dominance began with WESG and ended with his 3rd GSL victory in septembre which contains roughly 6 months. Yeah... I still think that Maru's 3 GSL victories in a row are a more impressive feat.
Serral might be the best player right now but one has to consider that he has a big advantage against the korean players. He is profiting from the weirdly strong EU Zergplay which doesn't affect korean competition all that much which makes it hard for korean terrans and protosses to train against a style like his. But also he is not suffering the bigger vulnerability that a league system like GSL brings with itself. He simply never is confronted with a extremely good player who can prepare solely for him for an entire week or even more. This is why I still consider Maru as the player of the year.
Hello friend, I respect your opinion on the matter.
Even if you value WCS less than GSL I find it weird that people are willing to completely disregard it and say it doesn't matter. If he had lost those tournaments I'm sure you'd be pointing to that and saying it proved he wasn't good.
The fact is despite better players generally winning in SC2, there remains a high degree of volatility which is why players like Has or Seed or Sniper can sometimes reach a finals.
The most impressive thing about Serral to me is how ridiculously long his streak has been. It bucks any metrics on randomness in the game. Keep in mind back in the early days of SC2 people argued things like "there will never be a Bonjwa in SC2 because it is too volatile". Games can be won or lost on one single poor engagement, but Serral has mastered the game so much that he has not lost a single offline bo3 since March. It's insanity.
Sure I'll agree 3x GSL beats 3 or even 4 WCS but when you add it all up Serral is simply not losing regardless of who he is playing or where at the moment. He is clutch as heck. And the whole 'noone is preparing for him properly' thing is just rubbish to me, he has the single biggest target on his back in SC2.
Well, I'm not disregarding WCS at all. I think it became more impressive and if you do well against Zergs in WCS you're probably really legit. And don't get me wrong: Serral's streak is really impressive and I consider him to be probably the best player in the world right now. But his streak did not begin with the first WCS this year - at least by far not on the level he showed since WCS vs the World. Winning 5 A-class tournaments and 2 A+-class tournaments is still less than winning 3 A+ tournaments and just one A tournament. It's the same with soO's long streak of 2nd places which can't outmatch the first places of Zest or Inno in that time.
Also the preparing-argument is still valid, I think. It's a big difference if you prepare for the playstyle of a player in general or if you systematicly plan out a scheduled series to the last detail which isn't surrounded by other matches and a exhausting travel plus unfamiliar circumstaces.
People are already jumping to conclusions that he's the best ever?
At this point you can only say he has had the best YEAR ever. But people are already assuming Bonjwa status... not so fast! I've been around since the beginning of SC2 and Serral's dominance has only been going on for a relatively short time. One amazing year doesn't make you best ever. If 2019 is as good as this year for him we can start having this discussion...
Serral is extremely close to bonjwa status in my book, its just crazy, the skill he has shown for such a long time is awe inspiring. Hope he keeps staying on top of the world!
On November 26 2018 23:56 NinjaNight wrote: People are already jumping to conclusions that he's the best ever?
At this point you can only say he has had the best YEAR ever. But people are already assuming Bonjwa status... not so fast! I've been around since the beginning of SC2 and Serral's dominance has only been going on for a relatively short time. One amazing year doesn't make you best ever. If 2019 is as good as this year for him we can start having this discussion...
To say the truth, the Bonjwa title is more about dominance than consistency. In fact, Jaedong was not Bonjwa as he couldn't win his titles in a streak in 2009 whereas sAviOr was despite because of his streak of MSL titles/finals while losing to nonames in lesser tournament; Serral's dominance level is indeed Bonjwa like.
Thus said, in BW there was one major scene, the Korean one, while we have two separated scenes in Sc2; Serral should go to Korea and win there because we can call him a literal Bonjwa in my opinion.
On November 26 2018 23:56 NinjaNight wrote: People are already jumping to conclusions that he's the best ever?
At this point you can only say he has had the best YEAR ever. But people are already assuming Bonjwa status... not so fast! I've been around since the beginning of SC2 and Serral's dominance has only been going on for a relatively short time. One amazing year doesn't make you best ever. If 2019 is as good as this year for him we can start having this discussion...
To say the truth, the Bonjwa title is more about dominance than consistency. In fact, Jaedong was not Bonjwa as he couldn't win his titles in a streak in 2009 whereas sAviOr was despite because of his streak of MSL titles/finals while losing to nonames in lesser tournament; Serral's dominance level is indeed Bonjwa like.
Thus said, in BW there was one major scene, the Korean one, while we have two separated scenes in Sc2; Serral destroyed WCS and triumphed in cross scene tournaments, being the best this year and having the best run ever seen in Starcraft. However,I think he should go to Korea and win a Code S because we can call him a literal Bonjwa in my opinion and he needs some more achievements(give him time) and consistency through the years before we can call him GOAT.
On November 26 2018 16:43 Dave4 wrote: Seems to be some strong polling for most dominant run in SC2.
It's hard to argue, the only comparable runs would be Life, Zest and Maru I feel - and Serral's run has simply been longer and less blemished when you look at it as a whole. 7 premiers in a year is pretty ludicrous.
Well, how long one considers Serrals dominance highly depends on when his dominance startet this year. The fact remains that WCS competition still is not as hard as GSL competition. Thus the begin of Serrals period of utter dominance only can with certainty only be GSL vs the World where he destroyed korean competition. This would contain roughly for months until now. Maru's period of dominance began with WESG and ended with his 3rd GSL victory in septembre which contains roughly 6 months. Yeah... I still think that Maru's 3 GSL victories in a row are a more impressive feat.
Serral might be the best player right now but one has to consider that he has a big advantage against the korean players. He is profiting from the weirdly strong EU Zergplay which doesn't affect korean competition all that much which makes it hard for korean terrans and protosses to train against a style like his. But also he is not suffering the bigger vulnerability that a league system like GSL brings with itself. He simply never is confronted with a extremely good player who can prepare solely for him for an entire week or even more. This is why I still consider Maru as the player of the year.
Hello friend, I respect your opinion on the matter.
Even if you value WCS less than GSL I find it weird that people are willing to completely disregard it and say it doesn't matter. If he had lost those tournaments I'm sure you'd be pointing to that and saying it proved he wasn't good.
The fact is despite better players generally winning in SC2, there remains a high degree of volatility which is why players like Has or Seed or Sniper can sometimes reach a finals.
The most impressive thing about Serral to me is how ridiculously long his streak has been. It bucks any metrics on randomness in the game. Keep in mind back in the early days of SC2 people argued things like "there will never be a Bonjwa in SC2 because it is too volatile". Games can be won or lost on one single poor engagement, but Serral has mastered the game so much that he has not lost a single offline bo3 since March. It's insanity.
Sure I'll agree 3x GSL beats 3 or even 4 WCS but when you add it all up Serral is simply not losing regardless of who he is playing or where at the moment. He is clutch as heck. And the whole 'noone is preparing for him properly' thing is just rubbish to me, he has the single biggest target on his back in SC2.
Well, I'm not disregarding WCS at all. I think it became more impressive and if you do well against Zergs in WCS you're probably really legit. And don't get me wrong: Serral's streak is really impressive and I consider him to be probably the best player in the world right now. But his streak did not begin with the first WCS this year - at least by far not on the level he showed since WCS vs the World. Winning 5 A-class tournaments and 2 A+-class tournaments is still less than winning 3 A+ tournaments and just one A tournament. It's the same with soO's long streak of 2nd places which can't outmatch the first places of Zest or Inno in that time.
Also the preparing-argument is still valid, I think. It's a big difference if you prepare for the playstyle of a player in general or if you systematicly plan out a scheduled series to the last detail which isn't surrounded by other matches and a exhausting travel plus unfamiliar circumstaces.
[troll] GSL can not be a A+ tournament because the best player wasn't there making WCS the actual A+ tournament... making Blizzcon the A+++ tournament, which obviously must count triple
The "preparing-argument": Blizzcon had enough preparation time. Didn't help Maru now, did it? Kinda worked against him actually ^^ [/troll]
Best HSC evaar! You really have achieved something to be proud of Take! Chapeau
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
BW as a game is more mechanichally demanding than even LoTV, so age(that is undeniably a factor) counts more; current koreans aren't all that old. I agree that Inno, Stats, s0s etc getting slower and Zergs being kong with Maru(who improved) being still young was the key for his dominance this year.
Neeb, Serral and Reynor are not simply younger but just plainly better than Nerchio, Snute and Mana ever were; not necessarily younger players are stronger.
Flash in the post Kespa era still came back to being as strong as he was in 2010 despite being seven years older(his own opinion); or you could look at how much the next-gen in nowadays Tennis is struggling to take down Federer, Nadal and Djokovic despite the latter being past their prime in terms of age.
On November 27 2018 00:47 Xain0n wrote: Neeb, Serral and Reynor are not simply younger but just plainly better than Nerchio, Snute and Mana ever were; not necessarily younger players are stronger.
I can't agree with this. Snute could go toe to toe with top tier koreans like Rain, herO, Classic or Flash at the height of the Kespa era. except for Serral of course, he's an anomaly but he's not the only player that surpassed Snute.
If we speak of achievements, did Snute ever win a tournament in Korea? KeSPA players weren't really able to replicate their BW successes in HoTS given the game was not complex enough for them to shine, so probably you are overestimating the skill level of that era; if they had the same age, they would have shined way more in LoTV, for sure.
Dominating supposedly weakened koreans in LoTV is undeniably a better feat than stealing series from them in the highest depth, questionably highest skilled HoTS era.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
I never know what to think of those age stats, since on one side there seems to be some mechanical loses as you get older, but on the other side there are also a lot of other factor that aren't necessarily physical. The girlfriend thing is a bit of meme, but there is something to be said about the fact that BW style team houses practically prohibit most kind of stable or long term relation or even the pursuit of other interest, like go to school. Basically you needed to get out of the BW scene if you wanted to do something else in your life, which is something less true these day, but it still exist. And of course the military didn't help. It's gonna be interesting to see in the following year if older SC2 player can keep up the pace of the younger one.
I would point out to the FGC as an example that maybe age is less of a factor that we might think. It's a scene with a lot of new blood coming in, but there is very clear indication that player in their mid to late 30 can keep up very well despite the fact that it take very fast reflexes and mechanical skills. For example Tokido is probably the world best Street Fighters 5 player at something like 33-34 and Sako is currently ranked in the top 5 at 40 years old while having children. It's different style of game of course, but as far as the argument of mechanical skills and reaction time goes, it seems like you can overcome at least a good part of the age deficit if you have solid bases.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
What about the burn out ?
I think they were practicing much harder in teamhouse in the bw days. And you can't train like that hard and be efficient for age, it's okay when you are younger. I don't think the same happened in sc2
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
What about the burn out ?
I think they were practicing much harder in teamhouse in the bw days. And you can't train like that hard and be efficient for age, it's okay when you are younger. I don't think the same happened in sc2
Look at CN WC3 scene .
That's definitely an argument and the difference between old and young players might not seem as big as those stats show. However even looking at the current koreans play - some players have completely changed the way they play, like Inno who a few years ago just pummeled everyone with his parade pushes has now a much more methodical approach to the game or Zest who once was the epitome of standard macro play now playing more similar to herO with sharp timings. I think this has something to do with them compensating for their hands getting slower.
Though on the other hand we have Stats who reached his peak at the age where other players decline... maybe he's just an anomaly.
Yeah I don't think it's a coincidence the players doing really well right now are almost all in their 20-21, they are at their peak while others start to struggle. The fact that LotV is so heavy on multitask doesn't help either.
On November 26 2018 15:53 Dave4 wrote: The guy is just insane. Hasn't lost an offline bo3 since March.
Your thoughts?
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
Im not so sure now tbh. Still obviously super impressive to maintain his lan streak but the fact that taeja? and innovation both pushed him to his limits says to me that maru and ty are going to be very tough for him..as normal he looked invincible zvz and zvp but clearly most vulnerable zvt..to which he avoided playing a single match at blizzcon.
Tournament also curbs the raving that the Kr scene is weak..10 koreans invited (none of which are the best of their respective races) and 2nd through 6th to koreans lol. Serral is a madman holding up the foreign scene he needs some help people!
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
What about the burn out ?
I think they were practicing much harder in teamhouse in the bw days. And you can't train like that hard and be efficient for age, it's okay when you are younger. I don't think the same happened in sc2
Look at CN WC3 scene .
Current WC3 scene is indeed an anomaly even if the game rewards different mechanics; there are so many ex pros in their thirties doing well(120 is the only real new big thing). It kind of seems like Sc2 beta/start of WoL, i think things will change once Reforged is launched.
Age is generally a factor but some find ways to overcome it; being younger is like having more apm/eapm: it helps but it doesn't necessarily decide if you win or not.
On November 27 2018 01:29 Poopi wrote: Yeah I don't think it's a coincidence the players doing really well right now are almost all in their 20-21, they are at their peak while others start to struggle. The fact that LotV is so heavy on multitask doesn't help either.
This year !
Byun wasn't 20 in 2016, Polt wasn't 20 in 2016, TY wasn't 20 at the start of lotv, Rogue and soO weren't 20 last year
Stats is peaking because he is enjoying the game I guess, while INno says that he doesn't try hard. Work ethic > age.
Your brain and hands doesn't freeze at 25, you may want to see others thing than playing a game 5h a day though.
On November 26 2018 15:53 Dave4 wrote: The guy is just insane. Hasn't lost an offline bo3 since March.
Your thoughts?
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
Im not so sure now tbh. Still obviously super impressive to maintain his lan streak but the fact that taeja? and innovation both pushed him to his limits says to me that maru and ty are going to be very tough for him..as normal he looked invinvible zvz and zvp but clearly most vulnerable zvt..to which he avoided playing a single match at blizzcon.
He didn't dodge Terrans at BlizzCon, they just weren't matched against him. This patch introduced nerfs for Zerg and seems favourable to Terran, at least in this early stage(look at the other Zergs placements) and you have to add Serral's worst matchup is ZvT probably due to lack of top level practice. If Maru was playing this HSC he would have won it i guess but Serral will train and adapt, hopefully going to Korea.
On November 27 2018 01:29 Poopi wrote: Yeah I don't think it's a coincidence the players doing really well right now are almost all in their 20-21, they are at their peak while others start to struggle. The fact that LotV is so heavy on multitask doesn't help either.
This year !
Byun wasn't 20 in 2016, Polt wasn't 20 in 2016, TY wasn't 20 at the start of lotv, Rogue and soO weren't 20 last year
Stats is peaking because he is enjoying the game I guess, while INno says that he doesn't try hard. Work ethic > age.
Your brain and hands doesn't freeze at 25, you may want to see others thing than playing a game 5h a day though.
I'm talking about foreign scene, should have been clear. In Korea since there is no new blood there is not enough young players to overtake the old guard and former kespa pros.
But in the foreign scene there is a flood of 20-22 players
On November 26 2018 15:53 Dave4 wrote: The guy is just insane. Hasn't lost an offline bo3 since March.
Your thoughts?
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
Im not so sure now tbh. Still obviously super impressive to maintain his lan streak but the fact that taeja? and innovation both pushed him to his limits says to me that maru and ty are going to be very tough for him..as normal he looked invinvible zvz and zvp but clearly most vulnerable zvt..to which he avoided playing a single match at blizzcon.
He didn't dodge Terrans at BlizzCon, they just weren't matched against him. This patch introduced nerfs for Zerg and seems favourable to Terran, at least in this early stage(look at the other Zergs placements) and you have to add Serral's worst matchup is ZvT probably due to lack of top level practice. If Maru was playing this HSC he would have won it i guess but Serral will train and adapt, hopefully going to Korea.
Ya totally agree. Wasnt implying he dodged anyone dudes confidence is through the roof and well earned. Im just a bit nervous for his zvt as you said going up against the likes of uthermal and his 2 base BC isnt really going to help prep him. Would be incredible if he went to Kr but not looking like he wants to and u have to respect his reasoning.
On November 26 2018 15:53 Dave4 wrote: The guy is just insane. Hasn't lost an offline bo3 since March.
Your thoughts?
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
Im not so sure now tbh. Still obviously super impressive to maintain his lan streak but the fact that taeja? and innovation both pushed him to his limits says to me that maru and ty are going to be very tough for him..as normal he looked invinvible zvz and zvp but clearly most vulnerable zvt..to which he avoided playing a single match at blizzcon.
He didn't dodge Terrans at BlizzCon, they just weren't matched against him. This patch introduced nerfs for Zerg and seems favourable to Terran, at least in this early stage(look at the other Zergs placements) and you have to add Serral's worst matchup is ZvT probably due to lack of top level practice. If Maru was playing this HSC he would have won it i guess but Serral will train and adapt, hopefully going to Korea.
Ya totally agree. Wasnt implying he dodged anyone dudes confidence is through the roof and well earned. Im just a bit nervous for his zvt as you said going up against the likes of uthermal and his 2 base BC isnt really going to help prep him. Would be incredible if he went to Kr but not looking like he wants to and u have to respect his reasoning.
Of course he doesn't have to go to Korea and if he chooses not to we'll have to respect his decisions; however, he actually didn't exclude he'd go there in 2019 to train and possibly to play in GSL.
Before this patch he actually had much more to lose since he looked totally unshakable but with ZvT(and maybe ZvP) being harder it becomes even logical to go to Korea soon to improve; I was actually very worried as well after seeing Serral's games against Taeja, i feared Bunny could beat him in the winner's bracket final.
If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
What's interesting about this tournament was how quickly Serral adapted to Terran, I'd argue it was only 4-3 because of some bad luck on BO orders, and bad micro as Serral says .
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
While GSL is harder than WCS, the GSL field is more top heavy than WCS.
I think the best 32 players in the world a solid 10~ are non-korean.
We've seen korean juggernauts get defeated by non-serral foreigners plenty of times.
Not a massive Serral fan but it needs to be said. The guy has won almost everything this year, with IEM Katowice and WESG being the only exceptions. To put that in to perspective the lowest placing he's had all year in premier tournaments was a semi finals in IEM. He's won 6 (6!) premier tournaments and Home story Cup this year. He may well have to be considered the best zerg to have played the game and most certainly the best zerg currently competing.
I reckon if he competes in GSL next year and wins OR wins one of IEM Katowice/Blizzcon he has to be considered one of if not the greatest player to have played the game. If he maintains this level of consistency for at least a protracted period next year he almost certainly deserves to be called Bonjwa.
Yeah and all that has nothing to do with zerg being op with stupid units and macro mecanics , allowing them to do anything they want without commiting, with no risk. No serral is just a genius. Sure.
All protosses in loser's bracket. What a great year we will have again. Thank you blizzard, incredible choices since the beginning. Keep up the good work.
Sure, Zerg so imba, there is even one in the top six of HSC. And of course all the zergs flooding the GSL with their wins(no zerg even in the finals in 2018), poor Protoss was only in two GSL, Blizzcon and GSL vs the world finals. Serral with his unimpressive 40-0 record in offline events since march, dominating Zerg maybe even more than Protoss and Terran, is just some real lucky dude. Obviously no prodigy.
Ignoring the whining, I think it's quite funny to look at the race/player distribution of the premier tournament finals this year. Terran having relatively little representation isn't exactly new, but the fact that TY was the only one aside Maru to even make an appearance in the finals is still striking. For Zerg there were a few more players with good showings, but obviously Serral was by far the most visible. But Protoss actually occupied the most spots, despite only receiving two of the titles, and also had the most variety in players, though Stats stands out.
Though I would not bother to extrapolate much based on that. The most outstanding thing to note surely is that 10/14 of the finals were taken by just two players.
Well.. WCS is really Z heavy, but when looking at korean open tournaments, you get a Serral > P/T >Z dynamic, unless you start including patches that didn't include some really heavy zerg nerfs.
I really don't understand the Z "OP" posters, maybe you could argue it was slightly stronger than other races, but you can probably make a stronger case for Protoss.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
look at serral's 'competition' in wcs, he won montreal playing only one matchup lololol.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
While GSL is harder than WCS, the GSL field is more top heavy than WCS.
I think the best 32 players in the world a solid 10~ are non-korean.
We've seen korean juggernauts get defeated by non-serral foreigners plenty of times.
That might be right, but... what do we make out of this? I really don't think that GSL is more top heavy. We have more very good and overall better players in Korea. But we also know that a handful (or two if you will) of foreigners can somewhat compete with them. It's still to be noted that only Serral was able this year to get past the Ro8 of any tournament where a meaningful amount of Koreans played in.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
GSL vs the World and Blizzcon weren't the hardest tournaments. You may argue that they were as hard as GSL Code S but then Serral still "only" won 2 while Maru won 3. Maru did so in an environment where opponents know him very well and had much time to prepare solely for him. Maru's period of great performances lasted from March (WESG) to Septembre which is 6 months of unquestionable greatness. Serral's period of evenly great performances lasted from August (GSL vs the World) until now which is 4 months of coequal greatness. I exclude Serral's victories at WCS Austin and Valencia because his competition was not as hard in those tournaments.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
While GSL is harder than WCS, the GSL field is more top heavy than WCS.
I think the best 32 players in the world a solid 10~ are non-korean.
We've seen korean juggernauts get defeated by non-serral foreigners plenty of times.
That might be right, but... what do we make out of this? I really don't think that GSL is more top heavy. We have more very good and overall better players in Korea. But we also know that a handful (or two if you will) of foreigners can somewhat compete with them. It's still to be noted that only Serral was able this year to get past the Ro8 of any tournament where a meaningful amount of Koreans played in.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
GSL vs the World and Blizzcon weren't the hardest tournaments. You may argue that they were as hard as GSL Code S but then Serral still "only" won 2 while Maru won 3. Maru did so in an environment where opponents know him very well and had much time to prepare solely for him. Maru's period of great performances lasted from March (WESG) to Septembre which is 6 months of unquestionable greatness. Serral's period of evenly great performances lasted from August (GSL vs the World) until now which is 4 months of coequal greatness. I exclude Serral's victories at WCS Austin and Valencia because his competition was not as hard in those tournaments.
Congrats to Serral, but some of the games and that last game especifically was ugly, serral's adaptation to inno's style was furiously laying down creep tumors like his life depended on it and inno was playing TvCreep for the majority of the game.
Now, you guys gotta understand that having good creep spread is a very low risk very high reward skill that has a massive impact especially in ZvT, Serral is just one of the few that realized how important it is to spread like crazy, but other zergs are catching up and not only the games are getting uglier to watch, it just doesnt feel good to play the game as a terran when you are forced to kill creep tumors as the main thing in a game.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
Until something changes, Code S is only the biggest potential challenge for Serral, whereas for everyone else the hardest tournament to win is something Serral is entered in. Honestly, a better argument for these camps to debate is the preferential bias for preparation leagues over weekenders. Maru's recent inability to produce results without extended preparation for his opponent is too often used to discredit weekenders, when it might be a flaw worth discussion.
On November 27 2018 11:05 IshinShishi wrote: Congrats to Serral, but some of the games and that last game especifically was ugly, serral's adaptation to inno's style was furiously laying down creep tumors like his life depended on it and inno was playing TvCreep for the majority of the game.
Now, you guys gotta understand that having good creep spread is a very low risk very high reward skill that has a massive impact especially in ZvT, Serral is just one of the few that realized how important it is to spread like crazy, but other zergs are catching up and not only the games are getting uglier to watch, it just doesnt feel good to play the game as a terran when you are forced to kill creep tumors as the main thing in a game.
Have you been away from sc2 since early wol? Every zerg pro knows how important it is.
On November 27 2018 11:05 IshinShishi wrote: Congrats to Serral, but some of the games and that last game especifically was ugly, serral's adaptation to inno's style was furiously laying down creep tumors like his life depended on it and inno was playing TvCreep for the majority of the game.
Now, you guys gotta understand that having good creep spread is a very low risk very high reward skill that has a massive impact especially in ZvT, Serral is just one of the few that realized how important it is to spread like crazy, but other zergs are catching up and not only the games are getting uglier to watch, it just doesnt feel good to play the game as a terran when you are forced to kill creep tumors as the main thing in a game.
Have you been away from sc2 since early wol? Every zerg pro knows how important it is.
just ignore, he's been talking about "TvCreep" since at least sunday.
On November 27 2018 11:05 IshinShishi wrote: Congrats to Serral, but some of the games and that last game especifically was ugly, serral's adaptation to inno's style was furiously laying down creep tumors like his life depended on it and inno was playing TvCreep for the majority of the game.
Now, you guys gotta understand that having good creep spread is a very low risk very high reward skill that has a massive impact especially in ZvT, Serral is just one of the few that realized how important it is to spread like crazy, but other zergs are catching up and not only the games are getting uglier to watch, it just doesnt feel good to play the game as a terran when you are forced to kill creep tumors as the main thing in a game.
Have you been away from sc2 since early wol? Every zerg pro knows how important it is.
You don't quite understand, go watch that final game vs inno, no zerg dedicates his gameplay towards spreading creep as much as serral does, its like he doesnt care about much else, unlike korean zergs that like poking and moving around with their units and neglect optimal creep spread.
On November 27 2018 11:05 IshinShishi wrote: Congrats to Serral, but some of the games and that last game especifically was ugly, serral's adaptation to inno's style was furiously laying down creep tumors like his life depended on it and inno was playing TvCreep for the majority of the game.
Now, you guys gotta understand that having good creep spread is a very low risk very high reward skill that has a massive impact especially in ZvT, Serral is just one of the few that realized how important it is to spread like crazy, but other zergs are catching up and not only the games are getting uglier to watch, it just doesnt feel good to play the game as a terran when you are forced to kill creep tumors as the main thing in a game.
Have you been away from sc2 since early wol? Every zerg pro knows how important it is.
You don't quite understand, go watch that final game vs inno, no zerg dedicates his gameplay towards spreading creep as much as serral does, its like he doesnt care about much else, unlike korean zergs that like poking and moving around with their units and neglect optimal creep spread.
Serral only cans about spreading creep. (And macro, micro, counterattacking etc.)
On November 26 2018 18:14 Waxangel wrote: I don't think it's mutually exclusive to say 1) Serral's run of dominance is incredibly impressive, and 2) It's different than if he had achieved such results in a GSL environment. Both can be true at the same time
On November 27 2018 10:44 fronkschnonk wrote: I really don't think that GSL is more top heavy. We have more very good and overall better players in Korea. But we also know that a handful (or two if you will) of foreigners can somewhat compete with them. It's still to be noted that only Serral was able this year to get past the Ro8 of any tournament where a meaningful amount of Koreans played in.
...past the round of 8, like Neeb did in season 3? If you are arguing against someone with a strong opinion, I implore you to write nothing that is objectively false. You can write subjective stuff, but when it is objective you should stick with the truth.
On November 27 2018 10:44 fronkschnonk wrote: GSL vs the World and Blizzcon weren't the hardest tournaments. You may argue that they were as hard as GSL Code S but then Serral still "only" won 2 while Maru won 3. Maru did so in an environment where opponents know him very well and had much time to prepare solely for him. Maru's period of great performances lasted from March (WESG) to Septembre which is 6 months of unquestionable greatness. Serral's period of evenly great performances lasted from August (GSL vs the World) until now which is 4 months of coequal greatness. I exclude Serral's victories at WCS Austin and Valencia because his competition was not as hard in those tournaments.
The approach of measuring you are using is quite questionable. If someone is getting top score on every test, and then gets an increased difficulty of the tests while still getting top score, I would include the previous tests in my conclusion. Serral won everything for months before GSL vs the World. He has won everything after GSL vs the World too.
I would like to make a comparison with Maru. Maru aced the difficult test GSL, three times. Maru failed in two easier tests - according to you - GSL vs the World and Global Finals. How come he failed the easy ones? Global Finals was a 0-3 after a week of preparation, no excuse for jetlag and it was against someone that has had a considerably worse year than Maru.
My opinion is that you shouldn't focus on the victories. The victories are the extra fluff, while the games are the bread and butter. Looking at Maru's games, they are quite impressive, but there is a staleness to most of them. Maru played a few discrete styles, proxy being the most common style. Macro was not preferred, even if the macro was great. Looking at Serral's games, you have solid macro as a foundation. That is the go-to way of playing for Serral. Serral can be behind in early game and come back in the late game. He has done that over and over again. If Serral gets to the late game, he usually wins. Maru vs sOs was a total beat down. sOs predicted Maru's moves and won. If Maru had not been so stubborn about his style centric play, he could have played macro and won.
It seems as if Maru is insecure when playing matches that are not prepared far in advance. He's been playing poorly in the group stages of GSL and he's been playing poorly in weekenders. Had he been the best overall, he would have performed better at these types of matches as well. Maru did great at IEM, which was a pleasant surprise, so that is a plus.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL was not as hard as Blizzcon or GSL vs the world because it did not have the best player in the world, Serrel, in it,
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
True, Serral wasn't in GSL Code S.... But Maru WAS in Blizzcon and GSL vs the World.... and GUESS WHO WON BOTH?!?
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
On November 27 2018 20:14 Harris1st wrote: These Anti-Serral posts are getting more ridiculous by the hour...
On November 27 2018 09:36 NinjaNight wrote:
On November 27 2018 09:07 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:01 fronkschnonk wrote:
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
Plus let's be honest playing TvP in BlizzCon meta is more volatile than playing ZvP.
Looking at ro32 every season this year I'm skeptical to call this the hardest tournament.
Hardest tournament was Blizzcon. Why? Because top 8 koreans were there and everybody was taking it very seriously and preparing whole year just for it. WHY? Because it's 280k.
On November 27 2018 20:14 Harris1st wrote: These Anti-Serral posts are getting more ridiculous by the hour...
On November 27 2018 09:36 NinjaNight wrote:
On November 27 2018 09:07 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:01 fronkschnonk wrote:
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
There is no doubt Code S is harder than WCS, but not as much as you guys are saying considering it a tier 3 tournament.
BlizzCon has the highest money prize, the prestige of being considered official world champion if you win it and this year it had the true top8 koreans+Serral competing in it(whereas some of the current best foreigners were not there); clearly the hardest tournament, better than GSL Code S.
On November 27 2018 20:14 Harris1st wrote: These Anti-Serral posts are getting more ridiculous by the hour...
On November 27 2018 09:36 NinjaNight wrote:
On November 27 2018 09:07 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:01 fronkschnonk wrote:
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
I didn't say a word about "EU is the strongest region"... Seems like you don't have arguments and need to make stuff up xD You admit Serral is the best, yet you still don't see Blizzcon as the harder tournament? I am confused Serral + top 7 Koreans = hardest tournament = Blizzcon /= GSL
Serral casually dismantled sOs 2:0 and sOs said he did prepare for Serral
As for BlizzCon vs GSL, it's pretty simple to factually gauge which tournament is harder.
GSL S3 2018 top 16 is a combined 42205 points on aligulac.
BlizzCon is 41902 points on aligulac.
So the top 16 of GSL is slightly harder, but you have to play ro32 as well in order to get there. Let's keep in mind though that foreigners aligulac ratings would probably be lower if there was no region lock.
On November 27 2018 21:42 Poopi wrote: As for BlizzCon vs GSL, it's pretty simple to factually gauge which tournament is harder.
GSL S3 2018 top 16 is a combined 42205 points on aligulac.
BlizzCon is 41902 points on aligulac.
So the top 16 of GSL is slightly harder, but you have to play ro32 as well in order to get there. Let's keep in mind though that foreigners aligulac ratings would probably be lower if there was no region lock.
Twenty Aligulac points on average isn't really a meaningful difference and you have to take into consideration that's because there were Has, Heromarine and Nerchio(in his 2018 state) in that surely had a lower score than the bottom three ro16 Code Scontenders; besides, GLS S3 ro16 benefitted of Reynor being there. BlizzCon was more competitive at the very top level as there were all the best koreans+Serral.
In addiction to this, to access BlizzCon you have to win/reach finals or to be consistently well placed all the year in WCS or GSL circuit instead of passing one offline selection and a groupstage as you have to do to get into a single Code S ro16.
Gsl was a extremely dangerous and volatile tournament because teamhouses were a thing but right now it's just a show about maru and his bitches No way it's the hardest tournament currently but it's definitely the hardest tournament for Serral to win the final
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
The game itself is harder now. Straight up.
It's difficult to stay on top of everything because the level of play has elevated and things are FAST in LotV. It is now STANDARD to micro on two fronts just to look like you belong on the same stage, but really 3-front engagements while macroing are the baseline for high-level play at the moment. When players are unable to manage all three fronts, they get called out for "sloppy" play-- in the past, just having three fronts at ALL would have made you a consistently dominant player.
Some of the first-person views from Serral's Blizzcon run were absolutely crazy. At one point he was harassing the 4th, microing a drop between the main and the third (without losing any units!), while making main army vs. main army pokes, and he was coming away ahead literally every trade while this was happening. It was insanity. None of these players in their prime were on that level. The game was simpler in the past, with maps featuring more abusable terrain structure, abusable base layout/placement, etc. The game revolved around timing pushes to win not just to do damage and get ahead. Simply executing a really good push with a couple of dropships moving on the edge of the map is no longer meant as a winning move the way it was in earlier eras.
Yeah "It's difficult to stay on top". Sure, because we have one guy winning all the GSLs and one guy winning all the WCSs in a year. Why can't some people just admit that the scene is a whole lot less competitive now? Dont say because Maru and Serral are too good, to me they are no special than MVP, Inno, Life, Zest... when they were at peak, it's just because the majority of Korean pros are not committing that much to the game anymore.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
This is what i thought about. Not taking any thing away Maru and TY's success but to me the main reason why they became so good recently is the fact that other Koreans are not trying hard and there are no new blood in the scene.
On November 27 2018 22:31 seemsgood wrote: Gsl was a extremely dangerous and volatile tournament because teamhouses were a thing but right now it's just a show about maru and his bitches No way it's the hardest tournament currently but it's definitely the hardest tournament for Serral to win the final
And Marus bitches still slap around any foreigner not named serral, so yes, it is the hardest tournament.
On November 27 2018 20:45 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
On November 27 2018 20:14 Harris1st wrote: These Anti-Serral posts are getting more ridiculous by the hour...
On November 27 2018 09:36 NinjaNight wrote:
On November 27 2018 09:07 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:01 fronkschnonk wrote:
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
I didn't say a word about "EU is the strongest region"... Seems like you don't have arguments and need to make stuff up xD You admit Serral is the best, yet you still don't see Blizzcon as the harder tournament? I am confused Serral + top 7 Koreans = hardest tournament = Blizzcon /= GSL
Serral casually dismantled sOs 2:0 and sOs said he did prepare for Serral
Well, Serral doesn't have to play himself so from his perspective Blizzcon is definitely not the harder tournament. When evaluating the difficulty of Serral's Blizzcon run vs Maru's GSL runs the fact that Blizzcon has Serral in it doesn't matter because it doesn't make it more difficult for Serral to win Blizzcon.
On November 27 2018 20:45 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
On November 27 2018 20:14 Harris1st wrote: These Anti-Serral posts are getting more ridiculous by the hour...
On November 27 2018 09:36 NinjaNight wrote:
On November 27 2018 09:07 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:01 fronkschnonk wrote:
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
This doesn't make any sense. Serral is good, maybe even the best currently, but even with the diminished scene in Korea, GSL is still by far the hardest tournament. Yes, even harder than Blizzcon, which is why besides Serral only 1 other foreigner made the ro8. What's next, EU is the strongest region because Serral is in it? xD
Also, Maru got wrecked because he's got matched against one of the most intelligent players we've ever had and more importantly, against his teammate of several years who probably knows how he plays inside and out. It was shocking how short people were selling sOs in that match.
I didn't say a word about "EU is the strongest region"... Seems like you don't have arguments and need to make stuff up xD You admit Serral is the best, yet you still don't see Blizzcon as the harder tournament? I am confused Serral + top 7 Koreans = hardest tournament = Blizzcon /= GSL
Serral casually dismantled sOs 2:0 and sOs said he did prepare for Serral
Well, Serral doesn't have to play himself so from his perspective Blizzcon is definitely not the harder tournament. When evaluating the difficulty of Serral's Blizzcon run vs Maru's GSL runs the fact that Blizzcon has Serral in it doesn't matter because it doesn't make it more difficult for Serral to win Blizzcon.
That's true but we were trying to gauge(as objectively as possible) the difficulty of the tournaments themselves, not of the winning runs. Maru's would have been surely harder in GSL S3 if he were to face Serral, as Serral's would have been harder if he were to face Maru at BlizzCon.
isnt this whole discussion whether or not serral is the "best" or just the "a little bit the best" and after all maru this maru that blabla just terran salt/tears in disguise? just a thought...
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
This is what i thought about. Not taking any thing away Maru and TY's success but to me the main reason why they became so good recently is the fact that other Koreans are not trying hard and there are no new blood in the scene.
Yup and that's also a great point to bring up as to why the overall skill level in this game has not increased as much as a lot of people think it has. Edit: Don't want to take anything away from pros and it's still impressive what they can pull off, but with pressure from younger generations hungry for championships and some time in the limelight this would be a whole different story.
On November 27 2018 10:44 fronkschnonk wrote: I really don't think that GSL is more top heavy. We have more very good and overall better players in Korea. But we also know that a handful (or two if you will) of foreigners can somewhat compete with them. It's still to be noted that only Serral was able this year to get past the Ro8 of any tournament where a meaningful amount of Koreans played in.
...past the round of 8, like Neeb did in season 3? If you are arguing against someone with a strong opinion, I implore you to write nothing that is objectively false. You can write subjective stuff, but when it is objective you should stick with the truth.
mea culpa I somehow forgot about Neeb's great GSL run. But still my point stands that in the final stages of a tournament with Koreans a foreigner is the exception. Don't get me wrong, we have great players like, Neeb, Showtime, uThermal, Reynor, Scarlett, Elazer and Special who are able to compete with top Koreans every now and then, but when it matters they are still in the minority in the playoffs and get rarer and rarer in further rounds.
On November 27 2018 10:44 fronkschnonk wrote: GSL vs the World and Blizzcon weren't the hardest tournaments. You may argue that they were as hard as GSL Code S but then Serral still "only" won 2 while Maru won 3. Maru did so in an environment where opponents know him very well and had much time to prepare solely for him. Maru's period of great performances lasted from March (WESG) to Septembre which is 6 months of unquestionable greatness. Serral's period of evenly great performances lasted from August (GSL vs the World) until now which is 4 months of coequal greatness. I exclude Serral's victories at WCS Austin and Valencia because his competition was not as hard in those tournaments.
The approach of measuring you are using is quite questionable. If someone is getting top score on every test, and then gets an increased difficulty of the tests while still getting top score, I would include the previous tests in my conclusion. Serral won everything for months before GSL vs the World. He has won everything after GSL vs the World too.
I would like to make a comparison with Maru. Maru aced the difficult test GSL, three times. Maru failed in two easier tests - according to you - GSL vs the World and Global Finals. How come he failed the easy ones? Global Finals was a 0-3 after a week of preparation, no excuse for jetlag and it was against someone that has had a considerably worse year than Maru.
My opinion is that you shouldn't focus on the victories. The victories are the extra fluff, while the games are the bread and butter. Looking at Maru's games, they are quite impressive, but there is a staleness to most of them. Maru played a few discrete styles, proxy being the most common style. Macro was not preferred, even if the macro was great. Looking at Serral's games, you have solid macro as a foundation. That is the go-to way of playing for Serral. Serral can be behind in early game and come back in the late game. He has done that over and over again. If Serral gets to the late game, he usually wins. Maru vs sOs was a total beat down. sOs predicted Maru's moves and won. If Maru had not been so stubborn about his style centric play, he could have played macro and won.
It seems as if Maru is insecure when playing matches that are not prepared far in advance. He's been playing poorly in the group stages of GSL and he's been playing poorly in weekenders. Had he been the best overall, he would have performed better at these types of matches as well. Maru did great at IEM, which was a pleasant surprise, so that is a plus.
I didn't say that GSL vs the World and Blizzcon were easier tests. I'm not really sure about that (is the Blizzcon roster better or the GSL Ro16? - debatable), but what I'm really comparing is the amount of victories in toughest competition where Maru is in the lead. Also I already said that Maru's period of domination lasted until his 3rd GSL-victory and obviously didn't continue after that.
For Serral's wins before GSL vs the World: it's pointless. We just don't know how he would've performed at that stage of his play. Therefore it's not legit to include this into his period of dominance of top competition because he didn't participate in top competition at that time. When he did before in march he was beaten by Maru and Classic.
To compare the playstyles doesn't help here. Doing this always leads to the conclusion that a particular playstyle is overall the better playstyle but that's nonsense. The best playstyle is the playstyle that wins.
Yes, Maru getting rekt by sOs was quite ugly. But I think it's hard to judge. Maru looked quite uncontested in every other match and sOs is just weird and also is his teammate which makes up for weird mindgames. But those games happened after Maru's period of dominance anyway, so it's a bit unreasonable to compare the player in his peak to the player after his peak.
"Had he been the best overall, he would have performed better at these types of matches as well." Well, the same can be said about Serral according to the league format. It may be that Serral would've destroyed GSL if he participated but he didn't, so that's just speculation.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
GSL is NOT the hardest tournament and never will be as long as Serral isn't seriously considering playing in it. Blizzcon is the hardest tournament because the best of the best of both worlds a playing for huge amount of money and fame. How can you not see this? If you are planning to use the "preparation argument" again: Blizzcon had plenty of that. Look what happened to Maru... he got crushed as hard as humanly possible. Serral didn't
Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
No I didn't say that, read my post. I'm not the one making claims. I'm saying you can't assume Serral's year was better or that he is better because he didn't compete in Code S, the hardest tournament, where Maru was absolutely incredible and won 3 times. Serral didn't have such a level of difficulty in his runs.
I hope they play next year at a huge tournament, would be super interesting. And Serral should come to Code S and lets see what he can do there.
Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
Seems like Maru's problem is that he has Kryptonite! which i haven't seen yet from serral (maybe 3 rax's! lol).
If you look at GSL S2 and S3, zest top4 twice, top 4 home story neeb, top 4 gsl S3 but got knocked out in RO32 at WCS. Rouge top 16 GSL, but doesn't even make it out of group in home story
i think when you are looking at the player base i think theres an argument that the gap is closing a lot and some foreigners are actually near top level koreans. Maybe not at the start of this year, but defiantly in the last 5 months.
edit: somebody posted this on reddit:
Total (https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/a0vo7n/korean_vs_foreigner_winrates_in_hsc_18/)
Serral's 2018 winrate against Koreans is the highest ever, and it's also against highest ranked opponents. Maru doesn't even come close to those numbers, and while winning three GSLs is awesome, you can't simply forget all the tournaments Maru lost and pretend they didn't happen.
There is the obvious statistically clear truth and people who deny obvious truth for whatever emotional reasons. Serral isn't only the best player this year, but his 2018 is the best year a SC2 player has ever had. This is not arguable.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
But why? What is your argument? What makes Serral's performance this year better? It sounds like you're saying that Serral's successes of "lower quality" add up to a higher quality because he had so many of them. Serral only had 2 comparable successes to Maru's 3. And while Serral seems to be the best player right now, his period of comparable greatness does not yet last as long as Maru's did last when he won his 3 consecutive GSL-championships.
Serral's HSC performance wasn't as convincing as one could've assumed. In his match against Taeja he looked kind of "sloppy" sometimes (for Serral's standards that is) and his final against Innovation was very close, too. Considering Taeja just coming back and Inno being in a questionable form for quite some time now, we probably saw a weak spot in Serral's skillset which - luckily for him - haven't got tested very much throughout the year.
Serral's 2018 winrate against Koreans is the highest ever, and it's also against highest ranked opponents. Maru doesn't even come close to those numbers, and while winning three GSLs is awesome, you can't simply forget all the tournaments Maru lost and pretend they didn't happen.
There is the obvious statistically clear truth and people who deny obvious truth for whatever emotional reasons. Serral isn't only the best player this year, but his 2018 is the best year a SC2 player has ever had. This is not arguable.
Serral wasn't nearly as much exposed to top competition as Maru was. Maru arguably played in 7 such tournaments (3 GSLs + 2 Super Tournaments + GSL vs the World + Blizzcon) and Serral only in two. Would Serral have participated in top competition in the first third of the year he wouldn't have won anything as his performances at WESG and IEM imply.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
But why? What is your argument? What makes Serral's performance this year better? It sounds like you're saying that Serral's successes of "lower quality" add up to a higher quality because he had so many of them. Serral only had 2 comparable successes to Maru's 3. And while Serral seems to be the best player right now, his period of comparable greatness does not yet last as long as Maru's did last when he won his 3 consecutive GSL-championships.
Serral's HSC performance wasn't as convincing as one could've assumed. In his match against Taeja he looked kind of "sloppy" sometimes (for Serral's standards that is) and his final against Innovation was very close, too. Considering Taeja just coming back and Inno being in a questionable form for quite some time now, we probably saw a weak spot in Serral's skillset which - luckily for him - haven't got tested very much throughout the year.
He won more, he won the biggest tournament, he had better stats, a better streak, earned more; what else?
I cannot state that WCS are harder than GSL because it isn't true. Still, if Maru's victories are let's say worth 1.3 on average as supposedly harder, he won 4 premier tournaments out of NINE whereas Serral won 6/9 plus HSC(which technically wasn't a premier but it could easily have been); if we try to weight them by saying that Serral's victories are worth 1 or 0.9 on average due to supposedly easier opposition, Serral still has accomplished more.
HSC was played during the new patch which was harder for every Zerg and better for every Terran judging by final standings; Serral was intensively tested in his worst matchup and he still ended up winning despite not being as mechanichally perfect as he was during BlizzCon.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
you forgot that all these gsl/ssl/blizzcon winners are far past their prime and became older, less motivated etc etc. and serral is younger than everybody + maru.
Older for sure, FAR past their prime not that true, less motivated i doubt since money prizes have skyrocketed.
In BW the oldest player to ever win an OSL was Jangbi with 23 years. Usually players couldn't keep up anymore at an advanced age and got surpassed by the younger generation. The reason the current koreans are still competitive is because there's no new blood to surpass them. If you think players don't get worse at a higher age than you must think that it's just a coincidence that every single bw player older than 23 couldn't keep up anymore. You can even see it in the foreign scene with Nerchio, Snute and Mana suddenly being surpassed by Serral, Neeb, Elazer, Reynor and co despite being the top foreigners for years. Did they just get lazy? I don't think so. I also don't think it's a coincidence that the youngest player in the korean scene is now suddenly dominating the scene in his 8th year as a progamer.
This concept of people getting too slow to compete with the best players most likely not true.
There was one study few years ago, conducted using sc2 replays and the authors concluded that the peak in "looking-doing latency" seems to peak at 24 years of age. This study was kinda flawed because the older players reported playing less than younger players, and even then the variance on that very slight decline was quite big, only the average showed a trend.
If we go by that study, your argument about people getting too old at 24, does not make any sense as they should be at their peak, and after few years they are as slow as younger players like 19 etc so 28 for and example doesnt have any disadvantage at all compared to someone like 20 or something.
Anyway, these changes are so negligible and there are other things were brains mature only at mid 20s as well that this whole idea of "25 should retire" is nonsensical.
What actually has been the reason why people in the past have often retired around 25? Most likely the reason has been crazy practice regiments, esport players play more their games than sports players practice and those guys also have normal lifes with families etc. Esport field also has historically been very unstable career and people realize they should start thinking their future, and start tranditioning while they still are young. No one can stay on the very top when they just burn out, patches may not favor them, or million other reasons, while all other life stuff is on back of their mind.
Also, its not like its unheard of that one of the best players are nearing 30, some of the top csgo players are almoust 30, fighter games the same deal, and in BW its not like Flash couldnt still be the best if the old Kespa BW returned back.
"He won more" That's no indicator because most of his wins were vs lesser competition.
"He won the biggest tournament" Biggest in terms of what? In terms of how hard the competition was? That's just not the case.
"He had better stats" Yes. But in a smaller sample of games (2/3 of Maru's amount of matches against Koreans).
"A better streak" That's true. The best streak of Maru vs Koreans this year was 18-2. The best streak of Serral was 15-0. The difference is veeeery small. At the same time one has to note that Maru's streak stretched over 6 months while Serral's streak stretched over 4 months until now.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
The game itself is harder now. Straight up.
It's difficult to stay on top of everything because the level of play has elevated and things are FAST in LotV. It is now STANDARD to micro on two fronts just to look like you belong on the same stage, but really 3-front engagements while macroing are the baseline for high-level play at the moment. When players are unable to manage all three fronts, they get called out for "sloppy" play-- in the past, just having three fronts at ALL would have made you a consistently dominant player.
Some of the first-person views from Serral's Blizzcon run were absolutely crazy. At one point he was harassing the 4th, microing a drop between the main and the third (without losing any units!), while making main army vs. main army pokes, and he was coming away ahead literally every trade while this was happening. It was insanity. None of these players in their prime were on that level. The game was simpler in the past, with maps featuring more abusable terrain structure, abusable base layout/placement, etc. The game revolved around timing pushes to win not just to do damage and get ahead. Simply executing a really good push with a couple of dropships moving on the edge of the map is no longer meant as a winning move the way it was in earlier eras.
Yeah "It's difficult to stay on top". Sure, because we have one guy winning all the GSLs and one guy winning all the WCSs in a year. Why can't some people just admit that the scene is a whole lot less competitive now? Dont say because Maru and Serral are too good, to me they are no special than MVP, Inno, Life, Zest... when they were at peak, it's just because the majority of Korean pros are not committing that much to the game anymore.
$$ prize is as high as ever. Serral just made 500k this year. Other players made more as well. U tell me they see Serral and Maru making themselves millionaires and that makes no one want to get a shared of that! Nonsense. $ to train in StarCraft is in historic low, since it's become free to play. Serral and Maru are young, and have been training for years, and are talented. They are Messi and Cristiano. It will take some other talented young people to overcome them. Like Mbappe or Neymar
You hardcore Maru fans can argue as much as you like. Fact is that Serral keeps winning tournaments while Maru keeps dropping out of tournament even before facing Serral. If Serral kept winning for the next years these people will still argue that somehow that's not enough and Maru is still better. Kind of ridiculous.
On November 28 2018 01:36 fronkschnonk wrote: "He won more" That's no indicator because most of his wins were vs lesser competition.
"He won the biggest tournament" Biggest in terms of what? In terms of how hard the competition was? That's just not the case.
"He had better stats" Yes. But in a smaller sample of games (2/3 of Maru's amount of matches against Koreans).
"A better streak" That's true. The best streak of Maru vs Koreans this year was 18-2. The best streak of Serral was 15-0. The difference is veeeery small. At the same time one has to note that Maru's streak stretched over 6 months while Serral's streak stretched over 4 months until now.
That he won more is indeed an indicator. It's not like Serral won 4 go4sc2, he won 4/4 WCS that you can't disregard as low class tournament by completely ignoring them; WCS competition is quite strong despite not being korean level.
BlizzCon IS the sc2 tournament; highest prize by far, most prestigious(How many Code S have there been? How many BlizzCon? Do you think Seed would have preferred to win a BlizzCon or a Code S?), hardest competition(in ro8 for sure, if not during groupstage).
Maru had one impressive year with his unprecedent Code S victories but he lost more tournaments than he won, most notably the most important; 2018 is the year of Serral.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
The game itself is harder now. Straight up.
It's difficult to stay on top of everything because the level of play has elevated and things are FAST in LotV. It is now STANDARD to micro on two fronts just to look like you belong on the same stage, but really 3-front engagements while macroing are the baseline for high-level play at the moment. When players are unable to manage all three fronts, they get called out for "sloppy" play-- in the past, just having three fronts at ALL would have made you a consistently dominant player.
Some of the first-person views from Serral's Blizzcon run were absolutely crazy. At one point he was harassing the 4th, microing a drop between the main and the third (without losing any units!), while making main army vs. main army pokes, and he was coming away ahead literally every trade while this was happening. It was insanity. None of these players in their prime were on that level. The game was simpler in the past, with maps featuring more abusable terrain structure, abusable base layout/placement, etc. The game revolved around timing pushes to win not just to do damage and get ahead. Simply executing a really good push with a couple of dropships moving on the edge of the map is no longer meant as a winning move the way it was in earlier eras.
Yeah "It's difficult to stay on top". Sure, because we have one guy winning all the GSLs and one guy winning all the WCSs in a year. Why can't some people just admit that the scene is a whole lot less competitive now? Dont say because Maru and Serral are too good, to me they are no special than MVP, Inno, Life, Zest... when they were at peak, it's just because the majority of Korean pros are not committing that much to the game anymore.
$$ prize is as high as ever. Serral just made 500k this year. Other players made more as well. U tell me they see Serral and Maru making themselves millionaires and that makes no one want to get a shared of that! Nonsense. $ to train in StarCraft is in historic low, since it's become free to play. Serral and Maru are young, and have been training for years, and are talented. They are Messi and Cristiano. It will take some other talented young people to overcome them. Like Mbappe or Neymar
Naive perspective, during Mvp's prime for instance there were more tournaments, teams paying decent salaries and sponsorships given to players, there was A LOT more money in the scene than there is now, this isn't the highest skill era, nor the most competitive one, deal with it.
On November 28 2018 01:09 fronkschnonk wrote: Would Serral have participated in top competition in the first third of the year he wouldn't have won anything as his performances at WESG and IEM imply.
No, those results decidedly don't 'imply' that. I find it hilarious that we've come to the point where you have to try to use top 4 finishes in top tier tournaments to minimize a player's achievements. Only with Serral do you get this level of mental gymnastics.
On November 26 2018 21:12 ParksonVN wrote: It's a fact that no matter how many titles Serral gets from now on, he will never surpass MVP, Inno, Life, Zest or even sOs in the SC2 all time ranking. Why? Becoz the Korean scene, aka the main scene is dead, this era is by far not the highest skilled one because i don't see that in the games. When you are as talented and hard-working and live with as many advantages as Serral, it's not hard to continue the dominance compared to the top Korean. At least Serral can farm 4 ez-money WCS a year while the rest of the best players have to compete for just 3 GSLs and a super tournament. SC2 can get better i believe, but in "entertainment wise", not "skill wise" or "esport wise" when the main scene is that restricted (not all Blizzard's fault though).
I disagree. Yes, the level of GSL RO32 is not really strong anymore. I must admit, i tend to skip it most of the time. But the top of the scene remained more or less from the top of HotS (most GSL,Blizzcon and SSL winners from the end) with some new stars emerging like TY, Stats and Rogue. GSL RO16 is still very very strong.
We lost Life due to his matchfixing, and we lost Rain to Brood War, Taeja coming back. Other than that, who did we lose who was GSL/SSL/Blizzcon winning caliber in 2015?
If we take a look at the current GSL Ro16's it's mostly stacked with mutliple GSL/SS/Blizzcon winners.
Inno, Zest, Dark, sOs are still there but not the beasts they were in the past. You can see Inno's micro has a lot of flaws, his macro is still good but the build execution is sloppy. He's also streaming a lot more and doing the same builds/tricks over and over. The same for most of the Koreans, they just don't have enough motivation anymore.
The game itself is harder now. Straight up.
It's difficult to stay on top of everything because the level of play has elevated and things are FAST in LotV. It is now STANDARD to micro on two fronts just to look like you belong on the same stage, but really 3-front engagements while macroing are the baseline for high-level play at the moment. When players are unable to manage all three fronts, they get called out for "sloppy" play-- in the past, just having three fronts at ALL would have made you a consistently dominant player.
Some of the first-person views from Serral's Blizzcon run were absolutely crazy. At one point he was harassing the 4th, microing a drop between the main and the third (without losing any units!), while making main army vs. main army pokes, and he was coming away ahead literally every trade while this was happening. It was insanity. None of these players in their prime were on that level. The game was simpler in the past, with maps featuring more abusable terrain structure, abusable base layout/placement, etc. The game revolved around timing pushes to win not just to do damage and get ahead. Simply executing a really good push with a couple of dropships moving on the edge of the map is no longer meant as a winning move the way it was in earlier eras.
Yeah "It's difficult to stay on top". Sure, because we have one guy winning all the GSLs and one guy winning all the WCSs in a year. Why can't some people just admit that the scene is a whole lot less competitive now? Dont say because Maru and Serral are too good, to me they are no special than MVP, Inno, Life, Zest... when they were at peak, it's just because the majority of Korean pros are not committing that much to the game anymore.
$$ prize is as high as ever. Serral just made 500k this year. Other players made more as well. U tell me they see Serral and Maru making themselves millionaires and that makes no one want to get a shared of that! Nonsense. $ to train in StarCraft is in historic low, since it's become free to play. Serral and Maru are young, and have been training for years, and are talented. They are Messi and Cristiano. It will take some other talented young people to overcome them. Like Mbappe or Neymar
Naive perspective, during Mvp's prime for instance there were more tournaments, teams paying decent salaries and sponsorships given to players, there was A LOT more money in the scene than there is now, this isn't the highest skill era, nor the most competitive one, deal with it.
And still, MVP would get crushed by today's not even top koreans. Probably most of the not korean top players would beat him. MVP would not be able to compete in today's scene without improving. Deal with it .
Serral did seem to have a weakness vs. those proxies - one can only wonder what had happened if Inno had proxied once more in game 7 :o But what an amazing year for Serral - looking forward to watching his games in 2019.
On November 28 2018 02:36 -KG- wrote: Serral did seem to have a weakness vs. those proxies - one can only wonder what had happened if Inno had proxied once more in game 7 :o But what an amazing year for Serral - looking forward to watching his games in 2019.
Thanks for another kickass HSC!!
There was an argument for 2/3 rax proxies being too effective against Zerg; in g7 Serral's build was appropriately defensive i guess and that's why Inno was ahead at first.
After only being back for such a short time, Taeja looks seriously impressive, 3-2 Serral. Serral didn't even look that good against Taeja in a lot of those games. And Taeja honestly just gave Serral two of those games because he still isn't as sharp as he used to be mechanically, but he'll get there. Excited to see Taeja come back into form and dominate kids once again.
On November 28 2018 02:49 Echoic_ wrote: After only being back for such a short time, Taeja looks seriously impressive, 3-2 Serral. Serral didn't even look that good against Taeja in a lot of those games. And Taeja honestly just gave Serral two of those games because he still isn't as sharp as he used to be mechanically, but he'll get there. Excited to see Taeja come back into form and dominate kids once again.
Don't want to take anything away from Taeja but if you paid attention you've seen that Serral made a lot of mistakes in those games he normally doesn't make. He has the most potential of all koreans to get better than Serral though imo.
On November 28 2018 01:36 fronkschnonk wrote: "He won more" That's no indicator because most of his wins were vs lesser competition.
"He won the biggest tournament" Biggest in terms of what? In terms of how hard the competition was? That's just not the case.
"He had better stats" Yes. But in a smaller sample of games (2/3 of Maru's amount of matches against Koreans).
"A better streak" That's true. The best streak of Maru vs Koreans this year was 18-2. The best streak of Serral was 15-0. The difference is veeeery small. At the same time one has to note that Maru's streak stretched over 6 months while Serral's streak stretched over 4 months until now.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
No I didn't say that, read my post. I'm not the one making claims. I'm saying you can't assume Serral's year was better or that he is better because he didn't compete in Code S, the hardest tournament, where Maru was absolutely incredible and won 3 times. Serral didn't have such a level of difficulty in his runs.
I hope they play next year at a huge tournament, would be super interesting. And Serral should come to Code S and lets see what he can do there.
Prove it's a harder tournament for anyone other than Serral. As far as I can tell, the data right now points to 'beating Serral' as the hardest task currently in SC2, so it follows that the hardest tournament to win is the tournament where Serral must lose for that to happen. Maru has failed in two opportunities to meet Serral in a final and stake his claim; Serral showed up at the final, Maru did not. Winners gonna win.
So why is it exactly that code S is the hardest? Is it that it's a preparation format? Many players probably find that format to be easier because it aligns with their strengths and weaknesses as a player, while others probably prefer weekenders. We shouldn't generalize the difficulty of preparation vs. weekenders to all players, because it's almost certainly different from player to player. E.g. For Maru, weekend tournaments seem to be the more difficult format.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
No I didn't say that, read my post. I'm not the one making claims. I'm saying you can't assume Serral's year was better or that he is better because he didn't compete in Code S, the hardest tournament, where Maru was absolutely incredible and won 3 times. Serral didn't have such a level of difficulty in his runs.
I hope they play next year at a huge tournament, would be super interesting. And Serral should come to Code S and lets see what he can do there.
Read the post again. It says "guys", that is plural. There is no mention of you, NinjaNight, so I am having trouble understanding why you responded like that. Xain0n: some people (naming no one) is doing this! NinjaNight: I do not do that! Take it back! It seems very juvenile. I actually mean juvenile like a 12 year old, literally (not figuratively). I work with a lot of pre-teens and early teens. The 12yo are the worst in feeling unjustly attacked when someone is critizicing someone else. They are making themselves the victims when they shouldn't.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
No I didn't say that, read my post. I'm not the one making claims. I'm saying you can't assume Serral's year was better or that he is better because he didn't compete in Code S, the hardest tournament, where Maru was absolutely incredible and won 3 times. Serral didn't have such a level of difficulty in his runs.
I hope they play next year at a huge tournament, would be super interesting. And Serral should come to Code S and lets see what he can do there.
Read the post again. It says "guys", that is plural. There is no mention of you, NinjaNight, so I am having trouble understanding why you responded like that. Xain0n: some people (naming no one) is doing this! NinjaNight: I do not do that! Take it back! It seems very juvenile. I actually mean juvenile like a 12 year old, literally (not figuratively). I work with a lot of pre-teens and early teens. The 12yo are the worst in feeling unjustly attacked when someone is critizicing someone else. They are making themselves the victims when they shouldn't.
No need for this crap when we're having a fine discussion. I was obviously one of the people he was addressing based on his posts. There's no problem here. It seems like you're just looking for a way to attack the person whose opinion you don't like when you should instead be attacking the argument.
On November 28 2018 00:42 Xain0n wrote: Numbers are in favor of Serral, that's no jumping to conclusions. You guys say that the quality of Maru's successes is so much higher than Serral's that Maru still had a better year; while I can agree Maru's success are of higher quality on average(by not much), this is not enough to close the gap. I'm convinced Serral was already slightly ahead after BlizzCon and this HSC win cements his lead; judging by the polls, i'm definitely not the only one who believes that Serral deserves to be crowned Player of the Year.
No I didn't say that, read my post. I'm not the one making claims. I'm saying you can't assume Serral's year was better or that he is better because he didn't compete in Code S, the hardest tournament, where Maru was absolutely incredible and won 3 times. Serral didn't have such a level of difficulty in his runs.
I hope they play next year at a huge tournament, would be super interesting. And Serral should come to Code S and lets see what he can do there.
Prove it's a harder tournament for anyone other than Serral. As far as I can tell, the data right now points to 'beating Serral' as the hardest task currently in SC2, so it follows that the hardest tournament to win is the tournament where Serral must lose for that to happen. Maru has failed in two opportunities to meet Serral in a final and stake his claim; Serral showed up at the final, Maru did not. Winners gonna win.
So why is it exactly that code S is the hardest? Is it that it's a preparation format? Many players probably find that format to be easier because it aligns with their strengths and weaknesses as a player, while others probably prefer weekenders. We shouldn't generalize the difficulty of preparation vs. weekenders to all players, because it's almost certainly different from player to player. E.g. For Maru, weekend tournaments seem to be the more difficult format.
The quality of opponents that you have to go through round after round is as high as it gets at GSL Code S. It's pretty much nothing but top koreans every single round. Maru is the only person to ever win 3 of them in a short period of time. It's just inconclusive who has done better between the two because they've both been at a super high level and Serral has not participated in Code S.
On November 27 2018 03:56 SnowAngel wrote: If the term "bonjwa" doesn't apply to a guy who hasn't lost a single bo3 or bo5 at any LAN since early February, despite attending to every major LAN tournament outside of Korea (some even there), does it apply to anyone?
It's hard to consider someone as bonjwa who wasn't part of the toughest competition for most of the year. It's not Serral's fault but to me a bonjwa not only has to be dominant but also has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues. That's sadly just not the case for Serral. As long as South Korea is the pinnacle of SC2 competition, one cannot be called bonjwa without winning a GSL.
WTF is this now ?
"has to be dominant at the hardest tournaments/leagues."
GSL vs. World and Blizzcon were the hardest tournaments of the year. Serral had exactly 0 losses there, with dominating perfomances against everybody he faced, maybe not including Stats who in vs World even put up some fight.
40 - 0 score. Whats there to argue about ?
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote: Yep, because of that you could even argue that Maru had a higher level of performance this year than Serral. Let's see Serral win all those GSL code S!
How in earth can he have HIGHER LEVEL of performance, if he was much worse than Serral or even Stats in the hardest tournaments of the year ???? Seriously, what is the logic behind that ?? Oh wait, there is none.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 01:36 fronkschnonk wrote: "He won more" That's no indicator because most of his wins were vs lesser competition.
"He won the biggest tournament" Biggest in terms of what? In terms of how hard the competition was? That's just not the case.
"He had better stats" Yes. But in a smaller sample of games (2/3 of Maru's amount of matches against Koreans).
"A better streak" That's true. The best streak of Maru vs Koreans this year was 18-2. The best streak of Serral was 15-0. The difference is veeeery small. At the same time one has to note that Maru's streak stretched over 6 months while Serral's streak stretched over 4 months until now.
That he won more is indeed an indicator. It's not like Serral won 4 go4sc2, he won 4/4 WCS that you can't disregard as low class tournament by completely ignoring them; WCS competition is quite strong despite not being korean level.
BlizzCon IS the sc2 tournament; highest prize by far, most prestigious(How many Code S have there been? How many BlizzCon? Do you think Seed would have preferred to win a BlizzCon or a Code S?), hardest competition(in ro8 for sure, if not during groupstage).
Maru had one impressive year with his unprecedent Code S victories but he lost more tournaments than he won, most notably the most important; 2018 is the year of Serral.
Of course Serral's WCS wins are great. I'm neither disregarding nor ignoring them. But they are not at the competetive level as GSLs are. It's an achievement that quite some korean players could have made if they had been in Serral's shoes. If we hadn't a Korean who won 3 GSLs this year I'd be totally on your side because the extend the skillgap has gotten smaller and the amount of matches won by foreigners vs Koreans implys that nobody could match Serral's insane consistency. But Maru's consistency over a timespan of 6 months is just more impressive to me because it happened in the higher competition.
Yes, Blizzcon is extremely prestigious and all that. And I totally get that it is the biggest dream to win on that stage. But competition-wise Blizzcon isn't harder than the GSLs. There are quite some factors that make this idea very questionable: - Blizzcon features the most successful players from throughout the year, not the best players at that moment. GSL and WCS do feature the very best players of their respective region at that moment every season (players that probably would've performed better considering their current form: Innovation, Trap, Solar, perhaps Gumi, uthermal, Reynor, Elazer,perhaps Scarlett) - the foreigner roster still has not enough depth to make up for the missing top Koreans who didn't make it into Blizzcon (I have the highest respect for Has, Lambo, Nerchio and Heromarine but they were merely cannon fodder for the rest of he field) Despite that I wouldn't consider Blizzcon a lesser competition than a GSL for the reasons you've mentioned.
Maru lost against 2 players in the same championships with Serral. Also lost to Serral 1 - 0. Serral lost to no one. None. not a single person. Anyone. Zero people. Get it, guys?? DO YOU GET IT?!? N-o o-n-e b-e-a-t S-E-R-R-A-L!
Its interesting to me how much rigorous debate there is here. All I will say is that the poll below shows the general sentiment of TL users:
Poll: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (219)
56%
Best overall player of 2018 (107)
27%
Best foreigner of 2018 (39)
10%
GOAT (21)
5%
Best Zerg of 2018 (8)
2%
394 total votes
Your vote: Serral's place in SC2 History at the end of 2018
(Vote): Best foreigner of 2018 (Vote): Best Zerg of 2018 (Vote): Best overall player of 2018 (Vote): Most dominant run in SC2 history (Bonjwa?) (Vote): GOAT
At the time of writing, there are 56% who correctly believe that Serrals run is Bonjwa status, 5% who believe he is a goat, and 28% who believe he was the best overall player of 2018. These responses (89% total) all effectively say "Better than Maru".
The 1 in 10 people who do appear to argue that Maru is better seem to make a lot of forum noise per capita by comparison - as the for/against messages seems roughly 50/50.
This suggests there could be some trolling involved, or that these users have a higher density of tears. If the latter, Maru's fans' tears of sorrow are mathematically approximately 5x denser than Serral's fans' tears of elation.
On November 28 2018 05:06 Locutos wrote: Maru lost against 2 players in the same championships with Serral. Also lost to Serral 1 - 0. Serral lost to no one. None. not a single person. Anyone. Zero people. Get it, guys?? DO YOU GET IT?!? N-o o-n-e b-e-a-t S-E-R-R-A-L!
PS: (after February ;D )
Obviously. We all know this, but it's not sufficient. Maru's reign of dominance was prior to this time and against a stronger field over a prolonged period. Also, in these championships Maru unfortunately went up against his weakest link - TvP against sOs and Stats (and being against sOs really compounds the issue) while Serral avoided his weakness ZvT.
It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
On November 28 2018 01:36 fronkschnonk wrote: "He won more" That's no indicator because most of his wins were vs lesser competition.
"He won the biggest tournament" Biggest in terms of what? In terms of how hard the competition was? That's just not the case.
"He had better stats" Yes. But in a smaller sample of games (2/3 of Maru's amount of matches against Koreans).
"A better streak" That's true. The best streak of Maru vs Koreans this year was 18-2. The best streak of Serral was 15-0. The difference is veeeery small. At the same time one has to note that Maru's streak stretched over 6 months while Serral's streak stretched over 4 months until now.
That he won more is indeed an indicator. It's not like Serral won 4 go4sc2, he won 4/4 WCS that you can't disregard as low class tournament by completely ignoring them; WCS competition is quite strong despite not being korean level.
BlizzCon IS the sc2 tournament; highest prize by far, most prestigious(How many Code S have there been? How many BlizzCon? Do you think Seed would have preferred to win a BlizzCon or a Code S?), hardest competition(in ro8 for sure, if not during groupstage).
Maru had one impressive year with his unprecedent Code S victories but he lost more tournaments than he won, most notably the most important; 2018 is the year of Serral.
Of course Serral's WCS wins are great. I'm neither disregarding nor ignoring them. But they are not at the competetive level as GSLs are. It's an achievement that quite some korean players could have made if they had been in Serral's shoes. If we hadn't a Korean who won 3 GSLs this year I'd be totally on your side because the extend the skillgap has gotten smaller and the amount of matches won by foreigners vs Koreans implys that nobody could match Serral's insane consistency. But Maru's consistency over a timespan of 6 months is just more impressive to me because it happened in the higher competition.
Yes, Blizzcon is extremely prestigious and all that. And I totally get that it is the biggest dream to win on that stage. But competition-wise Blizzcon isn't harder than the GSLs. There are quite some factors that make this idea very questionable: - Blizzcon features the most successful players from throughout the year, not the best players at that moment. GSL and WCS do feature the very best players of their respective region at that moment every season (players that probably would've performed better considering their current form: Innovation, Trap, Solar, perhaps Gumi, uthermal, Reynor, Elazer,perhaps Scarlett) - the foreigner roster still has not enough depth to make up for the missing top Koreans who didn't make it into Blizzcon (I have the highest respect for Has, Lambo, Nerchio and Heromarine but they were merely cannon fodder for the rest of he field) Despite that I wouldn't consider Blizzcon a lesser competition than a GSL for the reasons you've mentioned.
Yea, that's what i said as well. WCS obviously is not at Code S level, but not to the extent they don't count when comparing Maru's and Serral's achievements; I think that only a couple of the best koreans could have gone as far as winning 4/4 in a single year for reasons i explained in one of my previous posts.
As for BlizzCon 2018 being not harder than a Code S, Poopi pointed out that S3's ro16 was very slightly more competitive than BlizzCon's groupstage; except from Lambo, who could be top8 in WCS, i share your opinions about the foreigners who were there whereas I think Reynor, Scarlett and Elazer/UThermal could very well make up for Gumiho, Solar and Innovation(2018 shape)/Trap. In any of case, BlizzCon's playoffs were arguably more competitive.
Serral has had seven month of complete invincibilty, while Maru lost more than once during his period of dominance. If Serral didn't win GSL vs the World(and HSC) i could have doubts as Maru's Code S achievements are indeed a feat without equal, but since there can only be one Player of the Year i'd give it to Serral even if not by a large margin.
On November 28 2018 05:28 NinjaNight wrote: It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
I think Ninja Night is a fairly good example of the Dave4 Tear Density Theorem.
He or she has made 5 separate posts on page 9 of the comments section, increasing the density of tears approximately 5x in comparison to a Serral appreciator who may leave one comment per page to express their tears of elation for Serral's successful endeavours at HSC XVIII.
Come on people... We are all men not some mindless pussies to not admit it.. Serral won a BO1 against maru proved that he can win a bo5 or bo7 but it's not like he is gonna butt fuck him guys... And ofc that BO1 should not be taken as a whole picture that we will never be able to see because this year could be the only moment where both are in prime form. But thanks to another JA player named sOs we won't be able to see it anw.
On November 28 2018 05:28 NinjaNight wrote: It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
I think Ninja Night is a fairly good example of the Dave4 Tear Density Theorem.
He or she has made 5 separate posts on page 9 of the comments section, increasing the density of tears approximately 5x in comparison to a Serral appreciator who may leave one comment per page to express their tears of elation for Serral's successful endeavours at HSC XVIII.
Actually, I really like Serral. Cut the crap. Can't we just have a friendly debate without getting into stupid insults?
Serral has had an amazing year and I'm not taking anything away from him.
On November 28 2018 05:28 NinjaNight wrote: It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
I think Ninja Night is a fairly good example of the Dave4 Tear Density Theorem.
He or she has made 5 separate posts on page 9 of the comments section, increasing the density of tears approximately 5x in comparison to a Serral appreciator who may leave one comment per page to express their tears of elation for Serral's successful endeavours at HSC XVIII.
Actually, I really like Serral. Cut the crap.
The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
I don't see anyone saying that. He's being compared with Maru who had a super amazing year. It follows that Serral did too. No one is doubting that Serral's year was really great.
On November 28 2018 05:28 NinjaNight wrote: It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
I think Ninja Night is a fairly good example of the Dave4 Tear Density Theorem.
He or she has made 5 separate posts on page 9 of the comments section, increasing the density of tears approximately 5x in comparison to a Serral appreciator who may leave one comment per page to express their tears of elation for Serral's successful endeavours at HSC XVIII.
Actually, I really like Serral. Cut the crap. This kind of idiocy is out of control, you're like the immature people in twitch chat. Can't we just have a friendly debate without getting into stupid insults?
Serral has had an amazing year and I'm not taking anything away from him.
Apologies friend, I mean no disrespect. I was simply noting the high volume of posts that you were making, I imagine you might be having a little difficulty in replying at the moment due to spam filters.
The Dave4 Tear Density Theorem is not about insulting members of the any particular club, but simply recognising that they are a (vocal) minority on the forums.
Approximately 1 in 10 users are for whatever reason not of the view that 7 premier tournaments in one year (including the largest) means that a foreigner was the best player of 2018; and those users will generally tend to post more frequently.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
A cool series, personally I was cheering for INno so it was a little disappointing to see him not being able to close it out, but at the same time very well played by Serral as well.
The first game on Lost and Found was definitely my favorite (no bias )
On November 28 2018 05:28 NinjaNight wrote: It's really easy to look at the results this year and just assume that Serral was the best. Any Joe Schmoe would just look at everything at face value without critically analyzing it and say Serral is best. Obviously it looks that way at first. It's hard to look deeper at what was really going on.
And again, I don't really have a side in this. I'm not saying Maru was better and I'm not saying Serral was better. I'm saying Serral hasn't shown enough to say he was absolutely better than Maru.
I think Ninja Night is a fairly good example of the Dave4 Tear Density Theorem.
He or she has made 5 separate posts on page 9 of the comments section, increasing the density of tears approximately 5x in comparison to a Serral appreciator who may leave one comment per page to express their tears of elation for Serral's successful endeavours at HSC XVIII.
Actually, I really like Serral. Cut the crap. This kind of idiocy is out of control, you're like the immature people in twitch chat. Can't we just have a friendly debate without getting into stupid insults?
Serral has had an amazing year and I'm not taking anything away from him.
Apologies friend, I mean no disrespect. I was simply noting the high volume of posts that you were making, I imagine you might be having a little difficulty in replying at the moment due to spam filters.
The Dave4 Tear Density Theorem is not about insulting members of the any particular club, but simply recognising that they are a (vocal) minority on the forums.
Approximately 1 in 10 users are for whatever reason not of the view that 7 premier tournaments in one year (including the largest) means that a foreigner was the best player of 2018; and those users will generally tend to post more frequently.
Ah, sorry. You're right I just totally misinterpreted that.
On November 28 2018 06:39 Kurao wrote: A cool series, personally I was cheering for INno so it was a little disappointing to see him not being able to close it out, but at the same time very well played by Serral as well.
The first game on Lost and Found was definitely my favorite (no bias )
On November 28 2018 06:23 SetStndbySmn wrote: You're still proceeding with your argument based on long held sentiment. Firstly Serral faced 0 foreigners at blizzcon. Zero.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
Yup, well said there. In fact, one could easily argue that Serrals path to victory was even harder than Maru´s on that occasion.
I still cant buy this;
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote:
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 00:25 NinjaNight wrote: Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
But well, Serral hasnt had any kryptonite, now has he ? Instead he demolished sOs more easily than Has.
Still havent read any clear facts or even well based justifications that Code S is more hard than Blizzcon, because that simply isnt true. Same goes with GSL vs. the World. Preparing or not preparing doesnt imo mean that much, besides that should also weigh the scale towards Serral, who hasnt had that many opportunities to prepare all of his opponents all the time, and still has crushed everybody.
And losing to sOs.....or even Stats, how can you not calculate those defeats since Serral also played him both tournaments and won both. And also, so that people dont forget, Serral also beat Maru then in that one match, adding to his resume. Doesnt that count too ?
So, all in all, Maru failed 3 times when he was against Serral (Stats, sOs, Serral) in tournaments, while Serral won all of them. If you want to be a "purist" and look it at that way. How can you say Maru was better ?
In the end, either way we look at the results, these can only lead to one clear conclusion; Serral was, by far, the best player of 2018 ^^.
Preparing or not preparing is not harder or easier it's just different, people always bring this up like it's some silver bullet against Serral while also not realizing that Blizzcon is half preparing - half weekender.
On November 28 2018 06:23 SetStndbySmn wrote: You're still proceeding with your argument based on long held sentiment. Firstly Serral faced 0 foreigners at blizzcon. Zero.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
Yup, well said there. In fact, one could easily argue that Serrals path to victory was even harder than Maru´s on that occasion.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 00:25 NinjaNight wrote: Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
But well, Serral hasnt had any kryptonite, now has he ? Instead he demolished sOs more easily than Has.
Still havent read any clear facts or even well based justifications that Code S is more hard than Blizzcon, because that simply isnt true. Same goes with GSL vs. the World. Preparing or not preparing doesnt imo mean that much, besides that should also weigh the scale towards Serral, who hasnt had that many opportunities to prepare all of his opponents all the time, and still has crushed everybody.
And losing to sOs.....or even Stats, how can you not calculate those defeats since Serral also played him both tournaments and won both. And also, so that people dont forget, Serral also beat Maru then in that one match, adding to his resume. Doesnt that count too ?
So, all in all, Maru failed 3 times when he was against Serral (Stats, sOs, Serral) in tournaments, while Serral won all of them. If you want to be a "purist" and look it at that way. How can you say Maru was better ?
In the end, either way we look at the results, these can only lead to one clear conclusion; Serral was, by far, the best player of 2018 ^^.
To be honest, before Serral went on his path of dominance, they crossed twice in a weekender in March: they had the same result in Katowice(both lost in semifinals) and Maru beat Serral directly(3-0 in semifinals, Serral finished third) going on to win WESG. The game they played at GSL vs the World was a showmatch, still Serral had achieved his ultimate form at this point.
This doesn't change the fact that Serral had without any doubt better results in the four tournaments where they both figured in the lineup.
On November 28 2018 08:31 Xamo wrote: I am pretty sure Dave4 is Serral's mum
More likely his father as apparently Serral's mom isn't much into sc2.
Jokes aside, nobody is disrespecting Maru's code S path; just that his ro32 wasn't a real obstacle for him.
I, as well, hope Serral plays in Code S but it's not like it's a mandatory requisite to be taken into account when speaking of Sc2's greatest players.
Serral is a top player, and surely the best zerg today. But the greatest of all time played hundreds of games against koreans a year and played in starleagues. Cant compare him very well if he doesnt imitate that behavior.
I think dominance is the last thing SC2 need to still alive. Even if it´s a foreigner. When Neeb won in Korea everybody talked tons of shit about protoss. But Serral is a zerg. No problem. Same shit since 2010.
Well, the greatest were all koreans so it was natural that they played so many games against themselves; nowadays the best player isn't from Korea and a fair amount of top players are foreigners as well, despite koreans still being ahead on average.
That's to say GSL isn't as relevant as it used to be so you should take this into consideration when comparing Serral to the greatest of all time and probably he doesn't really have to go to play in GSL to prove himself as there are other cross region tournaments where he can face top koreans already.
In any of case, it would be a pity and a wasted occasion for him not to play in Code S due to the historical importance of the tournament; i am even personally convinced that it would be a good move to train in Korea next year given the recent balance changes, so i hope that he will go there soon.
On November 28 2018 10:05 EESCLuna wrote: I think dominance is the last thing SC2 need to still alive. Even if it´s a foreigner. When Neeb won in Korea everybody talked tons of shit about protoss. But Serral is a zerg. No problem. Same shit since 2010.
Oh come on .
Protoss was very strong when Neeb won Kespa cup, he played mainly protosses, Serral's victory had opponent of all races, included a Terran infested HSC.
On November 28 2018 05:06 Locutos wrote: Maru lost against 2 players in the same championships with Serral. Also lost to Serral 1 - 0. Serral lost to no one. None. not a single person. Anyone. Zero people. Get it, guys?? DO YOU GET IT?!? N-o o-n-e b-e-a-t S-E-R-R-A-L!
PS: (after February ;D )
Obviously. We all know this, but it's not sufficient. Maru's reign of dominance was prior to this time and against a stronger field over a prolonged period. Also, in these championships Maru unfortunately went up against his weakest link - TvP against sOs and Stats (and being against sOs really compounds the issue) while Serral avoided his weakness ZvT.
This is not true. Serral 3-0'ed Innovation in the GSL vs. the World tournament. And beat Inno, Taeja and Bunny and uThermal in the HSC which at least by initial appearances featured a brand new patch that looks initially more favorable to Terrans vs. Zerg if the performance of the other Zergs vs Terran is an indicator.
And again, in GSL vs the World and Blizzcon where both players were entered, Serral beat everyone he faced and won the tournament. Maru... did not. Serral did his part. It's not Serral's fault that he didn't face Maru, it's Maru's fault.
Maru could have made those finals and taken that money away from Serral. Without question in those tournaments Serral outperformed Maru by beating everyone and winning first place!
If anything, Serral's performance at this last HSC underscores some of his really admirable attributes as a player. He's really adaptable. He adapted within games and within matches. Adapted well enough to a new, arguably unfavorable, patch, to win even if he had some close matches. Muta play didn't work out for him, he went back to hydra. Ultras didn't seem to be the best initial Hive tech choice? Switch back to Broodlords and vipers (but tech switch back to ultra when suitable). Ditto in Blizzcon finals vs. Stats, after winning a couple of games with swarmhost builds, Stats adjusted and forced it to mach point, and Serral went back to Broodlords and won game 7. After losing a couple of quick games to proxy 3 rax in HSC finals, goes pool first and endures playing from a bit behind but goes on to win.
In comparison from what we've seen Maru can be lacking in this department. The first game he lost to sOs at Blizzcon showed so very clearly that sOs had prepared for him like reading a book (not just that he lost but a whole bunch of things happened that should have made clear how prepared sOs was from liberator snipe, widow mine sniping etc.) that the danger should have been very clear and he could have played in base standard and beaten sOs with his very superior macro game, but didn't adapt.
On November 28 2018 06:23 SetStndbySmn wrote: You're still proceeding with your argument based on long held sentiment. Firstly Serral faced 0 foreigners at blizzcon. Zero.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
Yup, well said there. In fact, one could easily argue that Serrals path to victory was even harder than Maru´s on that occasion.
I still cant buy this;
Including the Ro32 of GSL in order to compare it to Blizzcon is misleading because Blizzcon had no Ro32. What counts for the toughness of a tournament is not the particular path of one player but the strength of the overall field so that the winner has to overcome very hard competition at some point in the tournament. I'm not arguing that Blizzcon is a lesser tournament like some try to, but saying Blizzcon is even harder than GSL is just objectively wrong if you compare the field of players in those tournaments from Ro16 on.
SetStndbySmn's idea that Maru and Serral being simultaneously at Blizzcon makes it th hardest tournament is also misleading because as far as we can say Maru wasn't in top shape anymore at Blizzcon.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 00:25 NinjaNight wrote: Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
But well, Serral hasnt had any kryptonite, now has he ? Instead he demolished sOs more easily than Has.
Still havent read any clear facts or even well based justifications that Code S is more hard than Blizzcon, because that simply isnt true. Same goes with GSL vs. the World. Preparing or not preparing doesnt imo mean that much, besides that should also weigh the scale towards Serral, who hasnt had that many opportunities to prepare all of his opponents all the time, and still has crushed everybody.
And losing to sOs.....or even Stats, how can you not calculate those defeats since Serral also played him both tournaments and won both. And also, so that people dont forget, Serral also beat Maru then in that one match, adding to his resume. Doesnt that count too ?
So, all in all, Maru failed 3 times when he was against Serral (Stats, sOs, Serral) in tournaments, while Serral won all of them. If you want to be a "purist" and look it at that way. How can you say Maru was better ?
In the end, either way we look at the results, these can only lead to one clear conclusion; Serral was, by far, the best player of 2018 ^^.
Serral was not confronted with top terran material, so little do we know if this would've been doable for him.
Including the loss to sOs in the comparison is also misleading because that compares a Maru out of top form with Serral in his top form. Maru's period of dominance lasted from march to septembre while Serral's began with GSL vs the World in August. Serrals score vs Koreans is 15-0 in his prime, and Maru's is 18-2. Comparing this streaks doesn't say much about who is the better player. One rather has to compare the achievements made in their respective periods of dominance. And I still think that Maru's 3 GSLs are more impressive that Serral's two comparable tournament victories.
Including the Serral-Maru Bo1 Showmatch in this argument is just silly. This just shows that Serral is a great player who can take a Map of Maru. Nobody would've ever doubted that.
I made the hassle and compared the aligulac points of each opponent in the streaks of Maru and Serral at the time when they played them. But funnily we don't get clarity from that either because the average of Maru's oppenents is 2585 and of Serral's opponents 2586. That one point difference can easily be dismissed due to the overall upwards trend of aligulac points which doesn't reflect an objective upward trend in skill.
On November 28 2018 06:39 Kurao wrote: A cool series, personally I was cheering for INno so it was a little disappointing to see him not being able to close it out, but at the same time very well played by Serral as well.
The first game on Lost and Found was definitely my favorite (no bias )
Finnish guy cheering for the korean against a finnish? shame on you!
On November 28 2018 19:59 Poopi wrote: All this overshadows the fact that french players still perform like shit
Weird thing is that france was the top foreigner nation not so long ago but the best players kind of... dodged the pressure? Just imagine how much on top france could be by now if Lilbow would've continued, Stephano and Marinelord wouldn't have taken their hiatus and Dayshi actually would've gone on full tryhard mode. Add Dns and Clem and this would be a terrifying lineup.
Serrals score vs Koreans is 15-0 in his prime, and Maru's is 18-2. Comparing this streaks doesn't say much about who is the better player. One rather has to compare the achievements made in their respective periods of dominance. And I still think that Maru's 3 GSLs are more impressive that Serral's two comparable tournament victories.
This is really what it comes down to for me, but I think their achievements are close enough that we don't really know who was better during their respective time of dominance and hopefully they'll be in top form together next year!
On November 28 2018 06:23 SetStndbySmn wrote: You're still proceeding with your argument based on long held sentiment. Firstly Serral faced 0 foreigners at blizzcon. Zero.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
Yup, well said there. In fact, one could easily argue that Serrals path to victory was even harder than Maru´s on that occasion.
I still cant buy this;
Including the Ro32 of GSL in order to compare it to Blizzcon is misleading because Blizzcon had no Ro32. What counts for the toughness of a tournament is not the particular path of one player but the strength of the overall field so that the winner has to overcome very hard competition at some point in the tournament. I'm not arguing that Blizzcon is a lesser tournament like some try to, but saying Blizzcon is even harder than GSL is just objectively wrong if you compare the field of players in those tournaments from Ro16 on.
SetStndbySmn's idea that Maru and Serral being simultaneously at Blizzcon makes it th hardest tournament is also misleading because as far as we can say Maru wasn't in top shape anymore at Blizzcon.
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 00:25 NinjaNight wrote: Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
But well, Serral hasnt had any kryptonite, now has he ? Instead he demolished sOs more easily than Has.
Still havent read any clear facts or even well based justifications that Code S is more hard than Blizzcon, because that simply isnt true. Same goes with GSL vs. the World. Preparing or not preparing doesnt imo mean that much, besides that should also weigh the scale towards Serral, who hasnt had that many opportunities to prepare all of his opponents all the time, and still has crushed everybody.
And losing to sOs.....or even Stats, how can you not calculate those defeats since Serral also played him both tournaments and won both. And also, so that people dont forget, Serral also beat Maru then in that one match, adding to his resume. Doesnt that count too ?
So, all in all, Maru failed 3 times when he was against Serral (Stats, sOs, Serral) in tournaments, while Serral won all of them. If you want to be a "purist" and look it at that way. How can you say Maru was better ?
In the end, either way we look at the results, these can only lead to one clear conclusion; Serral was, by far, the best player of 2018 ^^.
Serral was not confronted with top terran material, so little do we know if this would've been doable for him.
Including the loss to sOs in the comparison is also misleading because that compares a Maru out of top form with Serral in his top form. Maru's period of dominance lasted from march to septembre while Serral's began with GSL vs the World in August. Serrals score vs Koreans is 15-0 in his prime, and Maru's is 18-2. Comparing this streaks doesn't say much about who is the better player. One rather has to compare the achievements made in their respective periods of dominance. And I still think that Maru's 3 GSLs are more impressive that Serral's two comparable tournament victories.
Including the Serral-Maru Bo1 Showmatch in this argument is just silly. This just shows that Serral is a great player who can take a Map of Maru. Nobody would've ever doubted that.
I made the hassle and compared the aligulac points of each opponent in the streaks of Maru and Serral at the time when they played them. But funnily we don't get clarity from that either because the average of Maru's oppenents is 2585 and of Serral's opponents 2586. That one point difference can easily be dismissed due to the overall upwards trend of aligulac points which doesn't reflect an objective upward trend in skill.
That's not it tho, Maru won one other tournament(very big) whereas Serral won other five. And you had to add a 25-0 against non-koreans to the same streak. It's true that comparing Serral and Maru isn't as easy as if they were both playing GSL, but i see an advantage and it's Serral's.
On November 28 2018 06:23 SetStndbySmn wrote: You're still proceeding with your argument based on long held sentiment. Firstly Serral faced 0 foreigners at blizzcon. Zero.
I really don't think a trivial extra group with Forte, Leenock, and Dear who have a near 0% chance of preventing a player of Maru or Serral's caliber from advancing, makes code S any harder. The difficulty of these paths are pretty similar in difficulty. So similar in difficulty that Serral and Maru's simultaneous presence in the tournament gives the edge to blizzcon easily.
Yup, well said there. In fact, one could easily argue that Serrals path to victory was even harder than Maru´s on that occasion.
I still cant buy this;
Including the Ro32 of GSL in order to compare it to Blizzcon is misleading because Blizzcon had no Ro32. What counts for the toughness of a tournament is not the particular path of one player but the strength of the overall field so that the winner has to overcome very hard competition at some point in the tournament. I'm not arguing that Blizzcon is a lesser tournament like some try to, but saying Blizzcon is even harder than GSL is just objectively wrong if you compare the field of players in those tournaments from Ro16 on.
SetStndbySmn's idea that Maru and Serral being simultaneously at Blizzcon makes it th hardest tournament is also misleading because as far as we can say Maru wasn't in top shape anymore at Blizzcon.
On November 28 2018 09:01 Starcloud wrote:
On November 27 2018 05:34 NinjaNight wrote:
Maru won GSL Code S, the hardest tournament in existence, multiple times which was unprecedented. Serral wasn't at GSL Code S so unfortunately we can only speculate, but the point is Maru's achievement was incredible and could be considered as good or better than what Serral has done.
On November 28 2018 00:25 NinjaNight wrote: Wtf? GSL Code S is clearly harder than Blizzcon. Maru's problem at Blizzcon is he ran into his kryptonite, sOs, his protoss teammate who just has his number. It's similar to how Nadal is Federer's kryptonite and beat him all the time, but Federer is still the best ever.
Again, let's see Serral start competing in the GSL Code S tournaments and see how he does.
And I'm not even trying to argue that Maru is better. I'm not claiming who is better. I'm saying you're all jumping to conclusions and assuming that Serral is better and assuming that Serral absolutely had a better year when you shouldn't be.
But well, Serral hasnt had any kryptonite, now has he ? Instead he demolished sOs more easily than Has.
Still havent read any clear facts or even well based justifications that Code S is more hard than Blizzcon, because that simply isnt true. Same goes with GSL vs. the World. Preparing or not preparing doesnt imo mean that much, besides that should also weigh the scale towards Serral, who hasnt had that many opportunities to prepare all of his opponents all the time, and still has crushed everybody.
And losing to sOs.....or even Stats, how can you not calculate those defeats since Serral also played him both tournaments and won both. And also, so that people dont forget, Serral also beat Maru then in that one match, adding to his resume. Doesnt that count too ?
So, all in all, Maru failed 3 times when he was against Serral (Stats, sOs, Serral) in tournaments, while Serral won all of them. If you want to be a "purist" and look it at that way. How can you say Maru was better ?
In the end, either way we look at the results, these can only lead to one clear conclusion; Serral was, by far, the best player of 2018 ^^.
Serral was not confronted with top terran material, so little do we know if this would've been doable for him.
Including the loss to sOs in the comparison is also misleading because that compares a Maru out of top form with Serral in his top form. Maru's period of dominance lasted from march to septembre while Serral's began with GSL vs the World in August. Serrals score vs Koreans is 15-0 in his prime, and Maru's is 18-2. Comparing this streaks doesn't say much about who is the better player. One rather has to compare the achievements made in their respective periods of dominance. And I still think that Maru's 3 GSLs are more impressive that Serral's two comparable tournament victories.
Including the Serral-Maru Bo1 Showmatch in this argument is just silly. This just shows that Serral is a great player who can take a Map of Maru. Nobody would've ever doubted that.
I made the hassle and compared the aligulac points of each opponent in the streaks of Maru and Serral at the time when they played them. But funnily we don't get clarity from that either because the average of Maru's oppenents is 2585 and of Serral's opponents 2586. That one point difference can easily be dismissed due to the overall upwards trend of aligulac points which doesn't reflect an objective upward trend in skill.
That's not it tho, Maru won one other tournament(very big) whereas Serral won other five. And you had to add a 25-0 against non-koreans to the same streak. It's true that comparing Serral and Maru isn't as easy as if they were both playing GSL, but i see an advantage and it's Serral's.
Yeah, but the one other big tournament he won was also harder to win than all WCS-Tournaments. And if you add 25-0 for Serral against non-koreans, you also have to add Maru's 15-0 (or 15-1, if you include the showmatch vs Serral) to his streak.
That's not it tho, Maru won one other tournament(very big) whereas Serral won other five. And you had to add a 25-0 against non-koreans to the same streak. It's true that comparing Serral and Maru isn't as easy as if they were both playing GSL, but i see an advantage and it's Serral's.
Look at the player pool of Serral's rivals in a WCS Tournament, and compare that with Maru's player pool of rivals in GSL. So to say look at Circuit without Serral and GSL without Maru. GSL is a whole lot harder/better.
That's not it tho, Maru won one other tournament(very big) whereas Serral won other five. And you had to add a 25-0 against non-koreans to the same streak. It's true that comparing Serral and Maru isn't as easy as if they were both playing GSL, but i see an advantage and it's Serral's.
Look at the player pool of Serral's rivals in a WCS Tournament, and compare that with Maru's player pool of rivals in GSL. So to say look at Circuit without Serral and GSL without Maru. GSL is a whole lot harder/better.
I agree on this(as i have been saying since the beginning of the discussion) but i don't agree that GSL being harder nullifies Serral's WCS wins to the point that his 7 tournaments become less worth than Maru's 4. In addiction to this, Serral's streak and stats(not to mention earnings) are objectively better even if we take into consideration his results against koreans only.
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements.
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements.
Maru is indeed clearly ahead of Maru and don't even make me think at how Serral's achievements could rival Serral's if he played GSL! I laughed alot xD
Again, thinking WCS is worth nothing is out of place. It would have been too audacious for Serral to play in Korea after 2017(I don't think he would have become the champion he is now) and would have made little to no sense to move there mid-year. Next year should be perfect!
[QUOTE]On November 29 2018 02:59 Xain0n wrote: [QUOTE]On November 29 2018 02:19 Charoisaur wrote: [QUOTE]On November 28 2018 06:05 RadgeRayden wrote: [QUOTE]On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal. [/QUOTE]
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon. [/QUOTE] It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements. [/QUOTE]
Maru is indeed clearly ahead of Maru and don't even make me think at how Serral's achievements could rival Serral's if he played GSL! I laughed alot xD
Again, thinking WCS is worth nothing is out of place. It would have been too audacious for Serral to play in Korea after 2017(I don't think he would have become the champion he is now) and would have made little to no sense to move there mid-year. Next year should be perfect!
[/QUOTE
We have Neeb having made Ro4 in GSL, Scarlett Ro8 before him. Foreigners have had way better results against too Koreans, like Showtime, who beat Dark, and Special... The gap is closing. So 4 straight wcs is a damn great achievement. Alongside a GSL vs the world + Blizzcon + HSC full of too Koreans + top4 alongside Maru in IEM + 3rd in WESG(beating Classic 3 -0)??? Best StarCraft year of a player EVER, with no doubt.
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements.
no matter how you put it, the second group stepping in still feels unnecessary since we are on serral's graduation party. Why don't you do it on Maru's university where it belongs?
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements.
no matter how you put it, the second group stepping in still feels unnecessary since we are on serral's graduation party. Why don't you do it on Maru's university where it belongs?
Well if that's how they feel then they really shouldn't put a poll asking if Serral is a bonjwa/best player of 2018/GoAT because that is naturally going to spark discussion that concerns the other guy who has a legitimate claim to being the best player of the year.
What's even the problem with people discussing the performances of the top SC2 players of the year? Those are valid discussions and can be discussed everywhere where those players are rated somehow.
It's heated as it is felt deeply! The key is the weight attributed to GSL when compared to WCS and BlizzCon, as mere stats are undoubtly in Serral's favor; to me(us Serral supporters) the higher difficulty of GSL is still not enough to outweight the number of Serral's achievements and his dominance, whereas for Maru's supporters(korean elitists?) GSL is so much harder than 4 wins are better than 7 triumphs.
Since Serral doesn't want to go to Korea apparently, I am now the biggest fan of region unlock(or, alternatively, of a GSL forbidden to foreigners even if i strongly prefer the first option).
I'd rather the latter simply because if we unlock now, it won't change anything for serral, but I can easily envision WCS being 6/2 kr - foreigners from the round of 8, like blizzcon. Imo the problem is not the region block per se but that we have few global events.
Region-unlock could dissolve so many problems right now. Maybe even reinvigorate the korean scene with more options for price money, sponsors on a global scale, more competitive WCS Circuits, ...
On November 28 2018 05:59 Xain0n wrote: The form Dave4 is using is humurous but probably could appear disrespectful.
He is saying that while the poll shows a significant majority of pro-Serral votes, the actual posts in this discussion are even(and i'd add that the pro-Maru posters are in higher number or so it appears to me); this means that either many of the pro-Maru users didn't vote in the poll or that they simply are very vocal.
One could even say it's somewhat disrespectful considering we're on a thread about a serral victory. Imagine if you graduate and people come out of nowhere to tell you your university isn't even that good. Like, c'mon.
It's more similar to someone graduating and people come out of nowhere to tell you "wow you graduated from the best university in the world, you're a genius" and then others stepping in with "wait this other university is just as good/ slightly better" Serral fans started this with all the goat/bonjwa crap
Personally in terms of achievements I think Maru is clearly ahead of Maru (3 GSLs are just more impressive than 2 weekenders (3 if you count HSC)) But the thing that speaks for Serral is his unbeaten streak which is incredibly impressive. Maybe if Serral had competed in GSL his achievements could rival Serrals but that's on him for not playing in GSL. He could have if he wanted. As it is imo Serral showed higher dominance but Maru has better achievements.
Maru is indeed clearly ahead of Maru and don't even make me think at how Serral's achievements could rival Serral's if he played GSL! I laughed alot xD
EPT
Well played Serral! You did us proud!!
Bonjwa
