The death of SC2 as a competitive e-sport - Page 7

On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:


I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this.

On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:

Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments

Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part.
It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context

MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments

So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark.

In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups

He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event

On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:

Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments

Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part.
It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context

MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments

So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark.

In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups

He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event

On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:


I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%)

On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:


I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%)

As a comparison, Serral has 738 games played against the current top 10, giving an equivalent % of 18,3% of his games being against other top 10 players. (with total 2880 wins, 1143 losses, 4023 games registered). Reminder that Serral has a significantly longer career, in which he has played a lot of games against at-the-time top 10 players, who aren't in the top 10 now.

Koreans in the top 10 would naturally have a higher % of games against other top 10, due to participating in fewer tournaments other than GSL, but that is a natural consequence of being in a more dead scene.

Not to mention the fact that using somebody's total career amount of games, vs players ranking TODAY is an incredibly flawed measurement which heavily benefits players with shorter careers, such as Maxpax versus players like Serral or Maru, whos games against players who at the time were top 10, but aren't now, are not being represented at all in this analysis.

But the original poster didn't bother to set a limit back in time, so I didn't either. I guess that's the logic needed to pretend that Maxpax has gotten to #2 in the world by beating top players. And even then he has a noticeably lower % of games played against the current top 10 than Serral does.

TL;DR:
You can't cherrypick your way around the fact that Maxpax has more games played against non top 10 players than the others at similar Aligulac rank. He has played a larger % of his games, and more games, against weaker players. Straight up. And as others have brought up, Aligulac does not at all incorporate the value of games being played in different formats. This effect also inflates Maxpax's rank, due to not playing in the high-pressure environments of large regional events or on LAN.

On February 15 2024 07:15 Nebuchad wrote:


As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games.

On February 15 2024 07:12 Nebuchad wrote:


What inflates Maxpax's rating is just that he plays a shitton of games, same thing as Clem. Check out how much Maru has played since january 2023: 157 series. Maxpax played 867 series. After we removed the series that Maxpax played against people who are too low to increase his rating, and do the same for Maru cause I'm sure he played a few of those too, we're still going to end up with a ton more matches against important players for Maxpax than Maru.

If Maru played that many series, what do you think would happen to his rating? Well it would increase, obviously, as Maru beats most of his opponents. But when he doesn't play, his rating stays the same, because that's how these things work. And this is how you end up with Maxpax ahead of Maru.

Dark doesn't care is just cope I reckon?

On February 15 2024 07:41 iRkSupperman wrote:


Pointing out that Maxpax has a lower % of games played against (the current) top 10 than other comparable players do (Koreans would have an even higher %, but as I said, aren't comparable due to their mostly dead scene) is very much relevant when the argument being presented is that his top 2 rank comes from supposedly all the other top players he's playing all day long.

Also can't but notice that you ignored the rest of the post. But sure, there's no way a ranking tool which equally weighs a RO64 ESL Open Cup game and a GSL or Katowice game could be flawed

On February 15 2024 07:50 Nebuchad wrote:


We've already acknowledged that the elo system is flawed as it puts Maxpax second when he clearly isn't that, you're having arguments with yourself. This is true of any game, if some players are playing a lot more than other players their elo rating isn't going to be a trustworthy way to judge how they matchup against each other.

As you've read the thread, you've seen my post just before this one in which I give an explanation for why Maxpax's rating is increased. It follows the data we have, is logical, and doesn't require making shit up about who Maxpax is and isn't playing against. Would you like to accept this explanation?

On February 15 2024 07:39 Mumei wrote:


Earlier you were referring to "the actual top 10" so I thought you meant "the other people who are top 10 now." That's where this started. It would be quite the project to figure out what percentage of his games were played against people who were top 10 at the time of the match, since as you point out that has changed over time. I don't have the time or inclination for that kind of project so I went with the kind of thing I could check at work without falling too far behind.

And playing more games against weaker players just means he has to win a higher percentage of his games and do well enough against his ostensible peers to maintain or increase his score. You seem to be under the misapprehension that he's found a "hack" where he can play the midcard and gain unlimited points in what is essentially a scam, and that's not how Elo works. This update for Serral is an example of what I mean: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/347/

He was at 3596, he goes 5–0 against much lower rated players, and he gains 1 point. MaxPax has to be doing well enough against players close enough to his ostensible level to maintain let alone increase his score.

Or here: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/345/

He goes 12–1 and only goes up 7 points.

Like Nebuchad said, the real "hack" is just "he plays a lot of games that Aligulac counts, and he wins against the people he's supposed to often enough for that to make his score go up instead of down." But that's a double edged sword; if he were to lose any games against the wrong people, his rating would plummet.

On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:

Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments

Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part.
It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context

MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments

So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark.

In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups

He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event

On February 15 2024 08:13 iRkSupperman wrote:


The only thing I see being made up in this argument is Maxpax being the top 2 SC2 player in the world.

On February 15 2024 08:25 iRkSupperman wrote:
That's where your whole initial argument falls flat. But even given that, I accepted your premise and checked if Maxpax has really been playing a higher % of his games against these top players than his peer players have (I used Serral for my example, as the #1 rated player and also as another EU scene player). Comparing them, Maxpax has a lower % of his games played against the current top 10 - again, continuing with your premise.

But yes, he has a higher # of games played vs those players, than Serral has vs the other top 10. Aligulac's handling of massgames is causing inflation there, just as it is causing inflation from the # of games played, and won, against lower ranked players in a scene which has vastly more low-mid level events ongoing

On February 15 2024 08:53 Mumei wrote:


I think maybe you're thinking of someone else; it wasn't my premise that he has played a greater percentage of his games against those people than his peers have. It was that he played more games against the current ranks 1 and 3–10 positions than he has against the current 11–20, but I wasn't making any comparison to anyone else. But again maybe someone else said he'd played a higher % relative to his peers. I haven't read every response to you in the thread.



I think is where we disagree. I think that "he plays in low stakes environments where his peer competitors probably aren't doing their best" is a fair enough argument to make for skepticism about his rating. I think you agree with this much, too. I don't think "he plays a lot of games and his score is artificially inflated by all his wins" or "he's farming low level players to increase his rating" are good arguments. Maybe you could argue instead that less active players' scores are underestimated by their relative lack of activity; I'd be amenable to that interpretation.

On February 15 2024 17:22 Harris1st wrote:


Yes and no. I'm pretty sure when in a semifinal/ final of even a smaller cup people wanna win.
The difference beeing, for a tournament like IEM the whole day/ week/ month is build around this tournament to be in the best shape possible while for small online cups you just sit down and play and try to win

Hell I remember practice matches in Tennis vs my best bud which were 10 times more intense than actual league play