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Vitomal
1 Post
On January 12 2024 20:08 matju wrote: I partially agree but Dark is definitley missing. Reynor? The List has to focus on the the golden age, when competition was open and Koreans werent drivin out just to push the foreigner | ||
Poopi
France13018 Posts
On January 12 2024 18:29 TheDougler wrote: With the criteria being what they are, I doubt even Taeja made the list! Unfortunate as I think with different criteria he might make the cut into top 10. I'll speculate what I suspect: 1. Maru 2. MVP 3.Life (with a heavy disclaimer, similar to that article way back in the day about that BW Zerg, I forget who. I wanna say SavioR maybe?) 4. Rogue 5. Serral 6. SoO 7. Zest 8. MKP 9. Trap 10. MC So far, I'm 0/1 Let's see if I can get on the board! I am one of the original MKP fans, but he is nowhere near top 20 in GOAT contention nowadays, let alone top 10 I still believe it’s possible he actually didn’t match fix vs ByuL, despite what most people thought back then: your performance can become pretty abysmal in sc2 depending on your mental health / stress / lack of sleep ; so it’s probably what happened. But even before these times, he was not very convincing during the kespa era | ||
TheOneAboveU
Germany3367 Posts
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Poopi
France13018 Posts
1) is mvp even in the list anymore? 2) how far from top 1 will be Rogue? 3) could Serral even be in the list given the criteria | ||
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The_Templar
your Country52798 Posts
On January 12 2024 20:59 TheOneAboveU wrote: I haven't read or watched anything StarCraft-related in a while, but I shall eagerly be following this. Same, even though I'm afraid that TaeJa and Mvp will get snubbed. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10382 Posts
I agree with the weighting of a lot of things. Like GSL Super 2011 being about the same as a GSL, some World Championships being a little more than a Korean individual league, and others a bit less, etc. I like the idea of 1st place making a little less than 2x prize money that of 2nd place, but for a GOAT list I think I would weigh 2 GSL golds similar to 4 GSL 2nd places. It's 2x as hard to win 1st place than 2nd place. I wouldn't say that 3 2nd places is the same as 2 1st places, at least a little less. And i generally like that overall career and non-1st places will be weighted a little more than gold medals and peaks than most other people. I wonder with the increase in players, if a Top 15 list coulda been a better cutoff, but Top 10 will still be fun. Perhaps before the #1 reveal, there can be a few HMs for #11-15 or something. In the end, I think what makes a "GOAT" is that their career was the hardest to replicate or match. So for me my list would be like this: 1) Serral 2) Maru 3) Rogue 4) Innovation 5) Life 6/7) Dark/MVP 8/9) Stats/Zest 10) sOs 11) Taeja | ||
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Ciaus237
South Africa288 Posts
On January 12 2024 21:48 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Really like having a methodology and explaining it! Makes for a justified list and worth discussing. I agree with the weighting of a lot of things. Like GSL Super 2011 being about the same as a GSL, some World Championships being a little more than a Korean individual league, and others a bit less, etc. I like the idea of 1st place making a little less than 2x prize money that of 2nd place, but for a GOAT list I think I would weigh 2 GSL golds similar to 4 GSL 2nd places. It's 2x as hard to win 1st place than 2nd place. I wouldn't say that 3 2nd places is the same as 2 1st places, at least a little less. And i generally like that overall career and non-1st places will be weighted a little more than gold medals and peaks than most other people. I wonder with the increase in players, if a Top 15 list coulda been a better cutoff, but Top 10 will still be fun. Perhaps before the #1 reveal, there can be a few HMs for #11-15 or something. In the end, I think what makes a "GOAT" is that their career was the hardest to replicate or match. So for me my list would be like this: 1) Serral 2) Maru 3) Rogue 4) Innovation 5) Life 6/7) Dark/MVP 8/9) Stats/Zest 10) sOs 11) Taeja Very based list. Aside from the exact placement of 4 to 10, this is very much what I'd say. And while it's not a complete measure, `hardness to replicate' the career is a nice phrasing of at least a big part of what I'd consider important for GOAT-ness. | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
The rest As much as people like to hype Maru GSL’s. Let’s be honest, he didn’t win until the post Kespa and waited for his Korean competition to get older and not in their prime anymore. Outside of Korea, his accomplishment are pretty unimpressive compare to his peers People may argue saying Rogue won his GSL the same way Maru did, however, rogue won multiple world championships. Probably the most feared BO7 opponent in the history of sc2 | ||
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JudeauTV
Germany262 Posts
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ZeroByte13
799 Posts
On January 13 2024 01:11 TossHeroes wrote: Maru won OSL (2013) and SSL (2015) - which were GSLs in all but name.As much as people like to hype Maru GSL’s. Let’s be honest, he didn’t win until the post Kespa and waited for his Korean competition to get older and not in their prime anymore. Outside of Korea, his accomplishment are pretty unimpressive compare to his peers Same list of players, same prize money and prestige, just different monikers. And he was a beast in the Proleague. Also he didn't get his "the last terran standing" nickname for nothing. During these years competition was at its fiercest in SC2. | ||
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Durnuu
13326 Posts
On January 13 2024 01:50 JudeauTV wrote: I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think GSL as "gold standard" tournament is and always has been overrated. Yes,the Korean scene has always been the most competetive, yes, GSL has always had enormous prestige and rightfully so, but in terms of measuring greatness and / or consistency, I have always felt the system a GSL plays out, especially the group phases, had too much of a luck component involved, mostly due to the BO3 format, since, honestly, every player at the top 20 can beat any other player in a BO3 in my opinion. Yes, preparation for weeks in advance as well as hand picking groups can kind of balance that out, but we have still seen - time and time again - that GSL winners of last season dropped out in their first group round in the next one. Some say that's just proof of "how cutthroat" a challenge GSL is, thus deserving of its gold standard status for competitiveness - I personally think it adds an odd randomness to the tournament, making me rate weekenders with mostly BO5s and BO7s in a double KO format a lot higher, when it comes down to actually see who is the better player. One question: where do you think Taeja should rank? | ||
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ZeroByte13
799 Posts
On January 13 2024 01:50 JudeauTV wrote: For long time weekenders with double KO also shown which race is more reliant onI personally think it adds an odd randomness to the tournament, making me rate weekenders with mostly BO5s and BO7s in a double KO format a lot higher, when it comes down to actually see who is the better player. - tricky builds (P) - being at peak concentration and mechanical ability (T) - stable reactionary play and "if you can't kill/criple me in the next 5 minutes you're royally screwed" (Z) Top protoss would run out of builds, top terrans would get tired, top zerg would win championships one after another. It has somewhat changed in the last 1-1.5 years with both T and P finally being able to play late-game vs Z. | ||
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rwala
344 Posts
-How a player performed relative to their overall race's performance. A case for why this should matter is that potentially in some eras or patches a particular race may be statistically over- or under-powered in a significant enough way that made it very hard for a race to make deep tournament runs or a bit easier. I know the way I'm framing this is in itself controversial, so if you consider this at all, I think you'd only want to consider stretches where it's widely acknowledged that a race had some advantage or disadvantage. -Comparing across different eras. I know you discussed this but not sure I understood what you meant. I can see differential weighting of eras/expansions cutting both ways. A traditional analysis might suggest that as the game has stabilized and there are fewer unexplored builds and more players with vast accumulated experience and game knowledge, it's harder to sustain a period of dominance. That's a fancy way of saying there's a reason we consider the earliest SCII pro matches "bad", and for that same reason dominance in the more modern eras should be weighted higher. On the other hand, as a fan I do want to attribute greatness to SOS-style high-IQ, strategic playstyles that achieved results via creative builds and smarter adaptation to the volatile and frequent meta shifts of earlier eras. -Tournament format, variance, and bracket "luck". One of the reasons that Magnus Carlsen--arguably the chess GOAT--abdicated the throne is that he felt the FIDE world championship tournament format was not great at deciding who was the best player and that you needed more games at shorter time controls to essentially smooth out variance and ensure a better test of skill. I know you attempt to weight tournaments, but I also feel that there's something to be said for thinking about tournament strength not just in terms of overall format and player and prize pools, but also the specific strength of the players that the GOAT candidate had to face to earn their championships and top placements. It's probably too time-consuming to do such an analysis for each tournament, and I'm not sure if there's a stable enough ELO system to even do it properly, but it's also true that not all tournament runs are created equal. Bracket "luck" is a significant factor in determining your odds of making a deep run for sure. For good reason, SCII has not historically used swiss or round robin formats other than in qualifiers or group stages, but those formats are much better at smoothing out variance. And because bracket matches are often Bo3 or Bo5, the variance jumps dramatically based on bracket luck in any specific tournament. Again, I don't know if or how to factor this in, but it feels significant. -How to weight tournaments. As you note, it's always going to be subjective and controversial. And because you're already being accused of Korean elitism, I'm sure this is a no-go  But I basically think the premier Korean individual leagues should be given more weight than the world championship-tier events through maybe 2020 (perhaps even later), when Clem began dominating, and several global champion-tier Korean players began going into military service or retiring (Soo, Innovation, TY, Zest, Classic, Rogue, Stats, Hero, SOS, PartinG, Byun, etc.). While it's true that by 2019, GSL did not include Reynor and Serral, the world championships often included players like Special, Elazer, Scarlett, Showtime, Heromarine, Nerchio, Kelazhur, etc. and excluded many of the above-named Korean champion-tier players. Remember that Rogue barely qualified for the 2017 global finals to win his first global championship, but he and many of the Korean players that didn't even qualify were clearly championship-tier players literally and figuratively in a different league than almost every foreign player. Special made top 4 at global finals that year...not sure how many GSL top 4s Special has in all his tries, but I'd be surprised if it's more than zero (not knocking Special, the point is that GSL is TOUGH). -Peak versus Career, but what about Peak Longevity? I get where you are coming from on peak dominance, but I think there should be some special consideration given to players who have demonstrated dominance or peak performance over multiple eras that included a variety of expansions, metas, patches, and GOAT contenders. Even Flash had some slumps, but for him to be a legitimate championship contender--and actually win championships--for over a decade is a rare achievement that I think places him among the greatest players in the history of 1v1 competition. This is not just because it is incredibly hard to maintain your skill level and motivation for so long, but also because the game and its players specifically evolve in ways that are designed to exploit your weaknesses and challenge your dominance. There are also just conditions and variables that exist during certain periods that are hard to put your finger and seem to trip up even the best players seeking to maintain their dominance. This is in my view one reason why it's very hard to definitively call guys like Serral and Mvp the GOAT in the way that compares to a guy like Flash. Maybe they would have dominated in eras, leagues, and tournaments before or after their time, but truly we don't know. | ||
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sidasf
108 Posts
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ZeroByte13
799 Posts
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: You probably meant something else, as Serral - just like any other player - was beaten countless times.There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. | ||
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rwala
344 Posts
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped. Is a player who has a winning record against Flash more of a GOAT than Flash? | ||
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luxon
United States117 Posts
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped. This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way. 1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today. There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better. | ||
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Poopi
France13018 Posts
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped. If I were to send a player in his prime, in an hypothetic figured out and perfectly balanced sc2 version, to defend humanity versus sc2 alien gods, I would send Maru without question If I had to send a Protoss I would send Zest For a Zerg I would send offline finals Rogue, or a coin toss between Serral and Dark (Life would be paid by the aliens probably  ) | ||
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Xamo
Spain886 Posts
But you know that only who is #1 matters to the community, don't you? | ||
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dysenterymd
1250 Posts
On January 13 2024 04:51 luxon wrote: This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way. 1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today. There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better. I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time, with the best candidate being widow mine vs ling bane micro. Compared to HOTS, ling bane vs widow mine micro is MUCH better, and has been for a while. Considering that people have had longer to practice with these units this isn't surprising, and doesn't invalidate past achievements. | ||
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